


Dry Salvages

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Transformation, Blood and Injury, Brotherhood, Divergent Timelines, Dysfunctional Family, Episode: s09e13 The Purge, Family Drama, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mytharc, Pacific Northwest, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Season/Series 09, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Whales, ocean setting, possession aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-12
Updated: 2014-08-12
Packaged: 2018-02-12 21:10:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2124801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The First Blade is at the bottom of the deepest ocean; Sam and Dean go get it. With the help of a little cross-pollinated magic, Dean undergoes an unusual transformation; for in the deep, there's more than a handful of origin stories that interweave and undercut the Blade's. As Sam struggles to reclaim himself in the wake of Gadreel's departure, he discovers that in the primordial sea, Heaven and Hell are not so far removed. And both might be clamoring his name. </p><p>However, with Dean faltering under the grim accretions of the last few years and the demands of his transformation, and Sam caught up in the impossibility of his own traumas (not to mention the return of an old temptation), it might not be Heaven and Hell that set the pace. From Kansas to Victoria, British Columbia, they have 1600 miles to get their shit together or drown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the SPN_J2_BIGBANG 2014 on Livejournal, in partnership with BLUETEAINFUSION, who painted the wonderful accompanying art. :)
> 
>  **Warnings:** post-traumatic stress, substance abuse (drugs), substance abuse (supernatural), suicidal ideation, some body horror, animal transformation

Sam wakes down out of a dream. 4AM is far enough from midnight; Sam's willing to call it morning.

He never sleeps under the covers, and he has no bed to make, but he stoops down anyway and pulls the coverlet tight and perfect. He snaps his pillow back to factory setting, until it's free of depressions and has no memory of his ever having been. He erases himself from the room and tries to scrub the nightmares out. He runs his hands across the knotty wool blanket, and with his touch talks his subconscious down from the imprint of those same hands against a forehead. He talks them away from Kevin burning, blood and sclera flaky and charred. He talks them down to the reality of his quiet bedroom and the sticky innocence of night sweat. Away from Gadreel and down to Sam. Just Sam.

His stomach burns with what might be hunger. He hasn't eaten since his lunch break at that weight loss resort, and that, he wagers, had been only marginally more satisfying than Dean's roofie pudding. He listens for Dean in the next room, but the bunker is quiet. 

It doesn't matter; he's looking for breakfast, not Dean. Just breakfast.

It's mornings like this Sam realizes how completely cut off they are from the outside world. There's no traffic off the Interstate, no buzz of next door's television; no kids making a game out of the ice machine, like he and Dean so often had. No late night motors running, no buzz of moths and beetles hitting bug lights; no electronic buzzer in the kitchen announcing his entrance--that two-tone step down of every mini mart in every state. Sam hated all of that then and almost misses it now. 

It's thick and empty here. Whatever goes down hangs in the air and the echoes never quite stop.

Dean's not in the kitchen. 

Dean's glass is in the sink, though, and rinsed; so there's that. Sam's not sure if the grave quiet means Dean's asleep or just gone, but Dean has a tendency toward entropy. Even inside the bunker he could be anywhere; at any given moment it's a decent bet he's partly in all of the rooms at once, like he's wandering through some kind of existential circuit. He'll turn up. Dean is not the issue here.

Food is another story. To Sam's dismay, none turns up in the kitchen. He'd finished off their corn flakes before Stillwater, and the milk had already been AWOL then. The fridge yields an empty six-pack yoke and half a bottle of ranch. No coffee, either. 

It's possible that's where Dean is now--a supply run. Maybe. Even though La Dow's doesn't open for another couple hours and using a Love's to stock a kitchen is actually a height of desperation they haven't yet hit. Lately Dean's supply runs tend to run anywhere from a trim thirty minutes to meandering six- or seven-hour black holes, though; if the latter is the case Sam may not see him until lunch.

There's tea in a cupboard--circa 1950s, unopened. Sam considers it with trepidation. They've learned the hard way that although the Men of Letters loved meticulously filed paperwork, their jars of magic were hazardously poorly labeled.

(To the left of the Coffeemate, a questionable centrifuge; to the left of that, a kettle. One of these is not like the others. Water, boiling beside questionable centrifuge. Its contents have reacted to the heat of Sam's kettle, are turning green). 

Of course, Sam hasn't labeled anything he's added, either. He figures if you don't know what it is, you shouldn't have it in your hands.

(Sam's tea tastes like fifty years of dust.) 

He chokes his first gulp down. It's too hot and he burns his tongue, but maybe that's for the best; he's never liked that herbal taste. He just needs something in his stomach. The caffeine is a welcome bonus.

Sam wanders.

He wanders until inevitably, he's standing before Kevin's final resting place--an otherwise unremarkable corner in the War Room. Equally inevitably, Sam takes his tea in his left and puts his right arm out straight, the space of a human skull between his fingers and the wall. Sam wonders if Kevin had been unsuspecting then, had trusted him right up until the moment he realized he shouldn't have. 

He wonders if Kevin had tried to run.

Sam should have known. He should have fought. You're _supposed_ to know.

Dean had known enough for the both of them, apparently.

And fuck, at the very least, he should have pressed Dean. Sam's thought this a thousand times in the last few weeks, and the rush of shame and rage and devastation never abates. God knows Dean had been acting strange enough; Sam should have pressed him hard instead of tapering off, the way he always does. But he'd been afraid, he thinks. He'd been afraid the way he's always been about Dean's erraticisms, tailspins, darker ideations, and of finding something at the core of his brother that he could not trust, could not fix, could not defuse. 

Which in the end, of course, he had. It just hadn't been at all what he'd expected. 

Or maybe it was. Or maybe it all went hand in hand. Sam doesn't know.

He lets his hand drop. He may never know.

Sam takes another mouthful of his tea, crocodile green. Over the rim of his mug he notices Dean's coat lying in a haphazard pile near Kevin's corner. Either it had slipped from the back of one of their chairs or Dean had skipped that step entirely. Again--somehow he's in every room, all at once. Sam kicks the jacket out of his path and recommits to his rounds.

Dean's in here somewhere, and they need to talk. Now.

\--

Sam finds him hanging over the mainframe, in the room where Charlie set up their angel-tracking headquarters. They'd outgrown any use for that in five seconds flat, which is typical of their breakthroughs. But of course Charlie was in Oz now; so there wasn't really any next step to take. Instead the whole outfit just sat and blinked, as useless as, well, a mainframe.

Dean doesn't look up when Sam enters. Useless or not, Dean's transfixed by the frenetic pulse of LED lights the mainframe scatters across one of the bunker's many maps. The lights coalesce and extinguish and Dean's eyes twitch like seismic needles registering the impact of each extinction. Maybe he enjoys that sensation of utter futility.

"Hey," says Sam, but Dean still doesn't look up.

"We're out of coffee," he says, louder this time.

Sam waits for the span of one more gulp of tea and receives more silence.

Dean is welcome to ignore him all he wants. Obviously last night's conversation hasn't quite ended yet on his end, either. But groceries are a part of their machine and not their brotherhood. If they let that get sloppy too, someone was going to end up dead. 

Sam clears his throat. "I said, we're out of coffee. So I'm gonna--" 

Screw it. What did it matter where he went, or who he told. "Find anything interesting?" he asks.

Dean looks up slowly, and when his gaze meets Sam his eyebrows raise, as though he'd just now realized he wasn't alone in the room. He's wearing a blue pallor that makes his age stand out.

"I'm looking for the douchiest-looking blip on the map. That's where Gadreel is," he explains simply.

So no, then. Nothing interesting. "What are you even doing in here? And when's the last time you slept?"

"That pudding knocked me out pretty good."

"That doesn't count."

"Do we still have passports?" Dean asks, and he sounds lightheaded. It's like he's looking for a tangent to collapse onto. "Nah, Frank burned 'em, right? Fuck."

Sam does not approach the mainframe, but he does look down. There's a decent concentration of red lights in the lower 48, but there's also fair distribution across Australia and what on this map is still technically the USSR. Dean fingers what may or may not be Angola and mutters, _What are all these countries, anyway?_

The bunker has twelve LED maps of the globe on its premises, and Sam still can't tell him what country that is. They are trying to save a world neither of them have ever seen.

Still, they've seen plenty. Dean puts a hand to his stomach, and Sam thinks that perhaps a fateful day has finally come--when Dean's diet of no sleep and no food and just liquor finally catches up with him. But Dean's head is bowed again, and he's watching the flex in and out of his hand as his breathing--which hadn't been even before, Sam realizes--evens out.

"We're gonna need passports," Dean announces hoarsely. "Otherwise we have a problem."

As if they didn't have a full cornucopia otherwise.

Dean's free hand taps the space that probably isn't Angola. It's a berry cluster of lights, and then it's empty. It's either a massacre or the LED's shorted out. Same difference, really. They can't fix it. Sam presides over the map in silence and watches the lights flicker out in bundles--extinction as seen from above. Of course it would be difficult for God to care, he thinks; the map isn't exactly drumming up his finest sympathies, either. But the whole angel thing is personal these days, and Sam's biased against them.

Sam listens to the sound of Dean's breathing. Speaking of personal.

"I don't think passports are our biggest problem, Dean," he says, finally.

"Yeah, I know, we're out of coffee."

"Uh, Dean. Are you--"

For a moment, Dean drops out of the room. His gaze dilutes, and he loses Angola in favor of some other vision. Seconds tick by, and the bright lights dance over the electric map. Then Dean's back, refocused and solid. For now. 

"We're out of liquor, too. So what's that?" He gestures with his eyebrows, then prods tenderly at the back of his neck. He dry-swallows.

You mean, what was _that_ , Dean? What's going on with you? Sam doesn't ask. He can't deal with this right now, not on top of everything else; neither of them can afford to fall into this kind of shitshow right now. Not at four in the morning. Sam does his best to put it from his mind, grimaces, and sniffs at his steaming mug. "Fifty-year old tea?"

"Huh." Dean's wraps his hand around his neck again. "That's what happens when you go to fat camp instead of the grocery store, I guess."

Dean fades again, into a sketch of someone Sam once knew. He seems almost transparent--except if he were, Sam would know what was going on. He'd be able to see something; he'd be able to do something to help. He'd be able to say something better than, "Dean, you really need to get some sleep."

Dean is not in favor. "You should--" He swallows. "You should leave. I'll finish up here. We can go grab breakfast-- or something-- While we figure out-- While we--"

Even barring present circumstances, Sam would have said no to that. _No, no we can't, Dean. Not anymore._ He can hear his own voice, soft and sad and firm, echoing out of counterfactual imagination. "Hey," Sam says gently, in the real. "You should drink this."

Dean doesn't look up. "Keep your mummified tea."

Sam knows where this is going, and Dean must know it, too, because he asks Sam to leave again. And when Sam doesn't, it becomes an order. "Get out."

Sam doesn't get out, and Dean abandons the sentiment in favor of something new, like he's jumped an orbital. He babbles. Or schemes. Whichever. "We could throw him in Pur--we could throw Gadreel in Purgatory, even if we can't get close enough to gank him, bastard wouldn't be expecting that, we could just open the gates and close them the fuck behind him. Throw Abaddon in, too. Hell, throw everything in, everything we don't need--"

Haphazardly, like all he's operating on is carryover from some earlier momentum, he picks up the pace: "Refrigerator's locked from the outside, no ticket out, plenty of Leviathans still hunting angel ass, Purgatory's the answer, Purgatory's the key--"

"Dean, you're scaring me," he says, though he's not scared, not yet. But for some things, it's just better to get in front. It's not as though revenge and bloodlust aren't common security blankets--because it's not like salted caramel pudding has ever done the trick--but more and more it's like he's not even talking to a person anymore, least of all his brother. Like an automated message.

"Okay." Dean stares him down expectantly. _Okay, Sam, you've aired your grievance. Now that that's taken care of, are you gonna get on board or not?_

Okay, so business then. He actually expects Sam to take this tangent seriously.

Sam sighs. "Purgatory's not a viable plan, Dean. 'Refrigerator locks from the outside'? I dunno if you've noticed, man, but _outside_ 's kind of the problem here. Metatron would spring him in what, a nanosecond? I mean-- Cas got pulled. And we already know the angels are bribing reapers. That's all they'd need--"

"Oh, that's all." The sound he makes is somewhere between a gasp and a chuff. "Back in my day, you went to Purgatory, people left you for dead."

Sam goes rigid. Okay, so not business. This is personal, after all. Sam's mug feels too hot in his hand, and his joints are sweaty. 

"Is that what this is about," he says.

This is the problem with him and Dean. You can't say anything without it popping out hysterically overdetermined. You can't be sorry without apologizing for your entire life, or someone else's; you can't be wrong without becoming pointless. You can't be angry without it boiling over into hatred, or self-loathing. Because when he thinks about why he came down here in the first place, it's not like he can itemize and discuss the great Winchester fiasco of 2013 chapter by chapter. And when he looks at Dean, and he tries to piece together what it is he's even walked in on, it's not about how Dean spent his morning, or what Sam said last night, or anything with that comforting sense of linearity. They are a kind of haunting, him and Dean--or they exemplify a kind of haunting. If Sam sat, and Dean sat, and they managed to disentangle everything between them without strangling themselves, that'd be ideal.

But they're the strangling type. Suddenly, Sam can't breathe.

And then he's down the hallway, he's back in the War Room; he's lacing his boots, his mug is lost somewhere, he's tripping up the stairs to the front door. His wardrobe haphazard--track pants, hunting boots, T-shirt. It's probably balls cold outside, but Sam needs out right now. He needs to get out now. 

Sam leaves.

\--

It _is_ cold. The temperature hits him like a shock. It's raining lightly. He's shaking, he realizes--and it's all he can do to force his body into motion and let the exertion marshal his breaths, because clearly his brain's not up to the task.

He shouldn't have left Dean like that. But something--it's like the logic wasn't there anymore. All the surety he'd felt--his place with respect to Dean and Dean's with respect to him--got knocked off its foundations, and everything just misfired. Instead of simplifying and ameliorating, they congealed, and now everything's all just double-edged shame and hurt and betrayal.

Sam runs. One foot after the other, something--an alien reassurance--wells up inside him. 

The rain is like a sea mist, he thinks. The numbness in his calves is like breakwater. 

And he thinks, he loves the sea.

Well, he doesn't. Sam doesn't. _Gadreel_ loves the sea. Sam's just the one who remembers it. 

If spending time with Dean is like a haunting, spending time on his own feels like too much company. Memories, impressions, Sam's not really sure what to call them. But it's like Gadreel dumped a box of them all over Sam's head.

They're nightmares, usually. But sometimes it's somatic, a magnetic kinesis that draws Sam, for instance, to Kevin's corner. Other times, it's like grabbing a gun in the dark--a gun you cannot see but have been told was there. Subliminal quantities decorating his headspace just out of his line of sight. It's gentler than the memories that slipped through Death's Wall all those years ago, gentler and more innocuous. But that's always been Sam's least favorite form of haunting. They are the sudden appearance of stranger's photograph above your mantle; they are an ocean where there isn't one; a vacancy where there used to be family. A preference you don't remember having.

Gadreel's grace is gone, but he's left other things behind. Hell at least had felt like penance, Sam thinks bitterly. This was erasure. This was use. It was someone else's guilt.

Gadreel loves the sea. Good for him.

What's laughable about this, of course, is that the reason it's so stuck in Sam's head like this is that Gadreel doesn't actually understand love. If the world goes quiet enough, Sam can hear the pulse of his own blood vessels constricting on the angel's thought process. He'd been trying to unravel love, finds its pieces and translate by triangulation--love is duty; love is loyalty; love is devotion; love is certainty; love is pain; love is sacrifice--but Gadreel's an angel, and from what Sam can tell, an outdated one. He never gets further than: 

love is sacrifice  
love is sacrifice  
love is sacrifice. 

Sam figures next time he'll be more selective about whose prayers he answers.

Gadreel's been in his head, sure. But there's a difference between presence and understanding. There's a difference between objective and effect. And if Gadreel left with the impression that he knew Sam at all, for the record, he fucking doesn't. Gadreel had never meant to hurt him, but that doesn't mean jack shit to Sam. 

Violation is violation--triangulate _that._

Of course, it's not as though Gadreel had been acting alone, Sam reminds himself. All of this, it's probably not about Gadreel at all; he was just a parasite acting like a parasite.

There are other culpabilities to consider.

Sam realizes his arms have begun to ache, and then he realizes his fists are clenched tight. He releases them and for a moment splays his arms out wide before snapping into better form. That's the problem with running; it's so easy to get lost in your own head. It's something Sam's loved about the act for his entire damn life. Now, he can hardly stand it.

He will find a new way to run.

Fuck it, he will find a new way to run.

Sam enjoys the Kansas scenery about as much as anyone else--which is to say, not at all. There's a river behind the bunker, which Sam would touch only if someone's life depended on it, but it lends their road a little more terrain than average. Head north and get free of the river, though, and everything's flat. It's stereotypical Kansas, broken up only by scatterings of frosty walnut trees and other scrub, though Sam's not sure if they're natural or just sound barriers. There aren't any trucks and there aren't any buildings, but maybe a long time ago, Lebanon had had other plans.

Sam focuses on the slap of his boots against pavement and the ache of night air in his lungs--because it's night still, isn't it. Almost any other household this early on a Saturday, and it's still night.

He picks up the pace. Warm-up, those first few minutes of harried jogging, are tight and obnoxiously slow; once he gets away from Gadreel his body reminds him how sore he is. Their basement altercation up in Minnesota had gone typically, if minorly, awry, and their straight-shot drive back south hadn't done him any favors. His boots, relative to his running shoes, are clod-like. It feels more like he's on the job than on his own.

But the faster he goes, the better it feels. His breath materializes before him as a white haze and everything feels a little wet. His body heats up and the world stays cool around him and he takes a longer stride, drives harder. 

It's one of this favorite feelings in the world, that contrast.

Sam flies down the highway, arms and thighs and quads pumping faster and faster until he's at a full-on sprint, which is unstoppable and eternal and feels like nothing at all.

Sam's breath comes in rapid, even puffs. He feels himself smack through an errant drizzle, then abandon it.

He outruns the whisk of frost across the pavement. There'd been some light powder earlier on, and what hadn't melted away picks up easily in the wind.

Sam runs.

And gradually, reluctantly, he comes down. 

He can't sprint forever.

Of course part of him, defiant, is almost certain that he could. He could if he tried, and he pushed and wrenched though that danger point, only to come out the other end, perpetually at top speed. But the rest of him knows he can't afford to try it. Because naturally the moment he does will also be the moment shit hits the fan and he'll need to be ready to fight for his life. Or something. Something like that. They need to be ready for the job. It's like a shackle; his legs beat against it restlessly but it just makes him feel like a child.

Still, it's barely 6AM in the middle of nowhere. Belligerently, Sam runs at pace for another couple miles before that recklessness sours his mood and his brain circles back to Gadreel again, and angels again, and Dean again.

He shouldn't have left Dean alone like that.

Oh, hell with it, Dean hadn't wanted him there in the first place.

Sam lets himself come all the way down to a near shuffle, like so many of the joggers in city parks. He's not going to think about anything; not out here.

Not out here.

The first thing he can think of: The winter wheat's been a problem child this year. Not for them. But when the local papers aren't flustered by strange deaths and disappearances, the front pages talk non-stop about the weather. They talk about the wheat, and the sugar beets, and the hailstone damage and so many things Sam really cannot help. Even in the dark the field on Sam's left looks thatchy and brown in places, just like the pictures in the Billings Local Weekly, or whatever he'd picked up at that one gas station. In the Kansas real-time, the wheat peeks through its light frost cover in disordered clusters misaligned with the rest of the field--as though someone had opened fire, and panic had ensued.

But this is not Sam's purview. It is not Sam's problem, and it's not Sam's fault.

Forget about the stupid wheat, too.

Sam takes in a deep, aching breath of cold air.

Usually he just hops in a car and the country bleeds into even streams of color as he passes through it, marked occasionally by billboards, reflective driving instructions--wear your seatbelt; road closure: take detour through Lawrence--and people afflicted by some kind of supernatural disaster. And if they're not homicidal or deranged, the people are great. They are. But drive-by humanity skews normal and it skews responsibility and Sam is now one hundred percent convinced that really fucks with you. But Sam is not going to think about that out here.

So, Kansas. Kansas, defined in terms other than straight, flat, or frigid. There's a puzzler. Sam picks up the pace and widens his stride, because his calves are starting to protest his sluggish crawl. As he runs, he catalogues. It's not just the winter wheat; there are the walnut trees between the fields, black fixtures against stormy twilight. There are puddles from the earlier rain and the melting frost, which backsplash on his pants. There's sloughy gray-brown snow in the irrigation ditches adjacent the road. And weeds, roadside weeds crawling up through everything--yellow tansy-mustards standing out like a shock against blacks and dark greens, serrate pepper-grasses vying for dominance. Other plants Sam doesn't know the names of. 

Sam doesn't care about any of that, exactly. But it's important--it feels important--to know something outside of the maelstrom. Details, heterogeneity, complex systems--they're all good things to remember. He's not gonna take up flower-pressing or anything, but he'll take equilibrium wherever he can get it.

Up ahead, 281 intersects some farmer's driveway. Over the summer, the farmer had a musty picnic table set up at the crossroads, where his kids peddled produce (which wasn't as cute as it sounds; it wasn't actually their produce. The family business was winter wheat, and spring wheat, and then more wheat. Sam remembers feeling obligated to buy a handful of strawberries anyway). The kids are gone, but there's someone sitting there, legs crossed--and, Sam squints to make out, hands folded, maybe thumbs twiddling--someone waiting.

Waiting, in the dark, at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. That's always a good sign; and so much for equilibrium.

Sam feels exceptionally unarmed. He has his phone in his pocket and a knife clipped against his ankle, but that's about it. 

He shouldn't have left the bunker like this (he shouldn't have left at all; but damn it, he'd had to). 

His caution is misguided, though. A few more strides, and Sam's alarm bells syncopate and desist--anticlimax. The sunrise suggestively tinges the flat, straight, frigid Kansas horizon behind the figure, and they regard each other in silence for a moment. Sam's chest heaves and his stranger flicks the dew from his shoulder. He's going to have to find a new jogging route.

This one's haunted, too.

"Crowley," Sam says, after catching his breath. "What the hell are you--"

Crowley puts a silencing finger to his lips and smiles. Then he withdraws his cell, taps the screen once, and, in orchestrated fashion, brings it to his ear. Sam can hear it emulate a rotary phone.

Without taking his eyes off Sam, Crowley says, "First ring. Impressive response time, my very dear, very _dead,_ friend, Kevin."

Leave it to Dean to answer Kevin's phone but never his own. At least that explains what Crowley's doing all the way out here. "The GPS on Kevin's phone is turned on, isn't it. You want to know where the bunker is."

"Secret bases don't stay secret forever, moose. It's been hounding me ever since your brother and your angel took me for that joyride, when we had to go looking for _you_." Meaning Gadreel, Sam does not correct. Gadreel, not him.

Crowley pauses to respond to something Dean says, something Sam can't hear. "I know what the junction at 36 and 81 looks like. King of the Crossroads, remember? Lovely diner there--Bel Villa. I recommend the steak."

Crowley has the doggie bag to prove it, Sam realizes. It's crumpled and wet, but he and Dean are indeed familiar with Bel Villa's. The restaurant's about fifty miles east of the bunker. Right now they're six or seven miles north, which means Crowley's been getting closer. Triangulating. 

Everyone is always triangulating. Sam's about as comfortable being stalked as he is inhabited.

"Have fun geocaching, Crowley. It's not happening." It's been nearly a decade since a demon walked into his home under its own steam, and Sam will not let that happen to his family again.

Crowley regards Sam with something that is either sympathy or mirth; it's impossible to tell in the dark. He puts his cell on speaker. (Speaking of triangulation.) It's Dean.

"--Mark me, I'll kill her. I'll kill you. And if I come home to a horde of your demons on my doorstep, I will slaughter every single one of you. Then I'm gonna step inside, I'm gonna drink a cold one, and I'm gonna sleep like a baby."

"What, with colic?" Crowley answers.

"You come and fucking try me," Dean replies.

"Always so hospitable," Crowley says, this time to Sam. "Your brother should compose professional housewarming invitations. 

"I hope you're invited, too."

There's a crackle of static, the subliminal blue of burning sulfur, a drop in barometric pressure.

Then Sam is alone. Pepper-grass, mustard, wheat, a picnic table. He turns back toward his own muddy tracks. He's alone.

See, it's exactly shit like this Sam always makes sure he's prepared for.

Sam _runs._

\--

It's effort wasted. Sam comes home harried and rain-soaked, hair stringy and his entire body coated in the marshy slickness of sweat; everything burns and he needs very badly to piss. And although Crowley's making himself at home at the head of the War Table, he and Dean are both still there, and they are waiting. Dean is slumped in one of the chairs off the left, waiting.

Sam's not sure why he thought Dean wouldn't be, except Dean's already walked out on him once this month, to say nothing of other betrayals. But damned if you do, damned if you don't; it's not relief Sam feels as he staggers down the bunker stairwell. He's somewhere between panic, endorphin-punchy, and dislocated fury and also, he really needs to piss. 

But that will pass, it will all pass. 

He locks his hands over his head and takes a deep breath.

He drips muddy, swamp monster puddles all the way to the War Table.

"What is this, sloppy Saturdays? Are you legacies or fraternity brothers?" says Crowley. He lounges.

"Get your feet off my War Table," says Sam.

"You're the one who wanted the VIP backstage pass, Crowley." Dean sounds burnt, and Sam can read his exhaustion in the lax, implosive comportment of his body plainer than speech. Dean keeps talking, though. "We're out of mini cheesesteaks, and you gotta pay extra for photo ops. Deal with it."

"At least pretend you're ready to do your job and get dressed. This is bad, even for you two."

Dean is exactly how Sam left him this morning. Black T-shirt, with his jacket still on the ground near Kevin's corner (don't look). When Dean knocks his gaze up to the ceiling and takes a shuddering breath, Sam catches the deep cast to the bags under his brother's eyes. At some point Dean had given up the dead guy robes and stopped mentioning the water pressure after every single shower he took, returned to that perpetual frenetic readiness to keep on the go. Except for the part where they're not going anywhere; they've slipped a gear. It's actually impressive how not ready they are.

If they go out like this, chances are Abaddon won't even need to worry about them, or the First Blade; they'll just wrap the car around a tree before they get anywhere near her.

But then Sam wonders: If it had been a different morning, or a better morning, would Dean have left? Taken Crowley and some mythical blade, left him to an empty Batcave and a switchboard of flickering lights? It wouldn't be a first; Dean has patterns. And at the height of this one, he does leave. 

"You don't have the blade. Where the hell would we be going? Disney World?" Dean mutters darkly. He turns to Crowley, sluggish and unguarded, and the motion is too familiar with the Devil for Sam to stomach. 

If Crowley doesn't have anything useful, he shouldn't be here. Actually, he shouldn't be here, period. Crowley doesn't move, but suddenly Sam can't help but see him as a saturation, something that finds corners and sucks the air from them, teases memories from shelves and plants new ones in every cranny. And Crowley needs to get the fuck out of Sam's bomb shelter.

"Sam," Dean barks, a sharp warning, and Sam startles. 

His fists are tight and his heart's racing.

But when he looks up, he can't read what Dean must have seen in him. There's something there, though, beyond exhaustion and self-pity. 

Dean looks away.

Crowley snaps up their beat of silence. "Well, if you've finished your morning dramas now..."

It's clear Crowley half expects it to continue, because he pauses. When they don't say anything, he restarts. "All right, in any case: It's a riddle, Cain's ocean. And when Cain chooses to throw something to the bottom of it, depth--I've had the pleasure of discovering--is a primarily metaphysical construct."

"Of course it is," they respond in unison. Sam looks at Dean again, but his head is bowed and he's rubbing his eyes, elbows propped up on his knees.

"Nevertheless I come bearing gifts," Crowley assures them both, though it's Sam who feels his gaze. _I am a gracious guest, Sam._ "Yours truly has divined the answer to your riddle--and, of course, all your roaring feelings of species dysphoria."

"Our what?" Dean asks blearily. If he's trying to wake up without ever actually going to sleep, Sam thinks, he's failing.

Crowley edges his Bel Villa doggie bag across the table. "Auto...zoophilic passions, as yet unaddressed? No?"

"Our _what._ "

Crowley turns to Sam. "Help an old chum out, Sam. Explain this to your brother."

"Our what?" Sam parrots.

Crowley looks disappointed. "Must I write it out? Given your taste in monstrous women, I always assumed there was something more interesting going on upstairs for you. You know, sexually. The books play with so much more innuendo than you broadcast in person."

"The books?" Sam's voice is tight.

Crowley stands and quests about the War Room (he pauses for a moment in Kevin's corner--don't look) as he explains. "Since I heard so much about them in the Winchester Dungeon Book Club, I felt obliged to download the full set."

Sam closes his eyes. Those books were never going away, were they. And Crowley's quest for literacy is another of too many violations of his privacy this year.

"Have you sampled the transformative works online, Sam? Because personally, I've found I like my Samn'Dean naughty, deadly, and hopeless."

Oh, for fuck's sake. 

Sam retaliates. "Yeah--I wrote one called 'Fuck Your Apocalypse."

"Mine was 'Purgatory and its Angel: Raider of an Ill-Conceived and Mismanaged Heaven,'" Crowley counters, with a manual flourish. "A noir epic."

"Crowley," Dean interjects. He's moved into Crowley's vacated chair and dumped out the Bel Villa bag in lieu of having to admit those books were real. His voice has a matte finish, uncadenced and steely. "What is this."

'This' is a piece of meat, gamey and fat-striped. Oxygenated gray in some places, but mostly a deep elk red. It's not a steak. Not from Bel Villa's, in any case.

" _Ever_ your loyal comrade, Dean, I took the time to dig up a myth," Crowley begins. "Not Biblical, and not European pagan, mind you, so it took some time. We all have our specialities. But the ocean is always, and to whomever, primordial space." 

Sam feels a tidal wind against his cerebellum, the magnetic compulsion to sway with the force of water surging past him, cresting into a wave and losing form somewhere far beyond himself. Gadreel's keepsakes, ever-eager to express themselves: The ocean, the ocean, full of amino acids forming, small organisms linking. Nutrients settling into the sea and life springing forth from them--slowly, slowly-- 

Crowley continues, and speaks of the birth of the ocean, and the subsequent birth of man. There is a tribe of him that have a pact not with the Devil, or with Cain, but their own mythic beast--their Chief--deep in the ocean. Those who are able to find its lair will feast with the Chief. And he will give them power beyond earth and ocean; the privilege of his songs; the honor of his crest. That is, the mark meets its reason--the blade that cannot be stopped.

"Sound familiar?" he finishes.

Sam fixes his gaze on Crowley to stave off the motion sickness; it's not difficult to find a mask of skepticism, frustration and distaste. "That could be anything," he points out. 

"Anything? Seriously? That ocean is stuff of legend, even in Hell--undoubtedly in Heaven, too. Think of it as the Higher Order's summer robot film--press releases for millenia. If this is 'anything,' then you don't know Cain at all."

And no, Sam doesn't. He hadn't been invited. But from what he can gather now, the whole thing almost adds up: Eschatological ecotone. Genesis of genesis. Philosophies not co-evolved but mutually derived _(because we all came from the sea, Sam; amino acids, sediments and sifting nutrients. spiritus, animus, we all came from the sea)_ It's possible. It could be possible. Sam scrambles, and attempts to synthesize, analyze, problematize. 

But Gadreel's ocean screams frothy and unrelenting against some imagined cliffside and Sam admits, yes. Yes it does feel right. 

Dean pokes at the steak in front of him, raw and elastic. "Right, so... what is this, exactly?"

Crowley rolls his eyes. "Allow me to simplify: In a manner Cain finds suitably swashbuckling, you need to take your VIP tattoo down into the deep blue and curry favors. _This_ is a prime cut of killer whale, seasoned and spellworked by yours truly. This is what you'll eat, what you will become, and how we're going to win this war."

"Absolutely not," Sam says, at the same time Dean says, "A whale? That's idiotic."

"The Kwakwaka'wakw beg to differ," says Crowley.

"Is there a reason you haven't done this on your own, then?" asks Sam.

"What part of Kwakwakwaka'wakw don't you understand, Sam? I'm a demon; my very existence hinges on Judeo-Christian dualism." 

"And ours don't?" He gestures between himself and Dean. Because between angel grace and demon blood, Sam feels pretty damn dualistic.

But Dean says, "Well, we did do that dog thing."

"Why don't you just possess a whale," Sam asks, without interlude. "That's easier. And possession's always the best solution, isn't it?"

Dean has a lot to say about _that_ , Sam can tell. But Dean doesn't come up with the words fast enough, and he gets left behind.

"Now you're just misunderstanding the art, Sam. Possession is a very particular skill; it takes a deft hand. You're lucky the average demon has the IQ of a tether ball, because if possession were easy, we'd have taken this rock over long ago. And remind me how many oceans you've had to save from the clutches of evil? No, truly, how many cases have taken you to sea?"

Nothing Apocalyptic; Sam will give him that. And anything else has been sort of low priority for a while.

"Regardless of one's deftness--unparalleled, by the way--or one's penchant for rugged maritime adventureship, possession remains a strictly human art." Crowley circles back around Dean. "Post-lapsarian red tape--no animals. No demons in the deep sea. This is why it has to be you, Dean."

"That's convenient," Dean manages, finally. It's almost a growl. "Whales, great. Sounds foolproof. But I have one more question for you, Crowley." He scrapes his chair backwards, a keening sound the echoes in the hall and reverberates through the War Table. "You're the King of Hell. But you can't kill a Knight, and apparently, you can't get the blade that can.

"Are you useful _at all_?"

Crowley regards him coolly. Sam watches as Crowley's lips crinkle at the edges, and the skin around his chin flexes into a faint, well-practiced smile. He sucks and swishes at the saliva in his mouth, as though he is taste-testing Dean's slight. But there is more triumph there than fury.

"I'd have taken your soul for dear Kevin's. Had you offered to sell."


	2. Chapter 2

"Free Willy meets Freaky Friday? Let's do this." 

It's this simple: Dean smells burnt flesh. He feels the tug of Kevin's body in his arms, first limp and then stiff and finally, soiled and limp all over again. And nothing gets him up like the smell of pyre in the morning. 

He's up and grabbing Crowley's shoulder before Sam can stop him. And Sam must be planning to stop him. He's about to do what he'd just told Sam _not_ to do, after all; and Sam's a big fan of pointing out these kinds of inconsistencies. Sam's cease-and-desist must take the long way out, though, because it's Crowley, not Sam, who pries Dean's hand away. 

Crowley forces Dean backward with a flick of his wrist, and he smiles. "That's my cowboy." 

Dean glowers. "That's not your anything. You keep talking like that, and I'm gonna kill you first."

"Surely you know what befell the boy who cried wolf."

"Hear tell he lost his kingdom and spent some time in my basement. But who believes rumors?"

"You do, if you want your little grubbies on this blade."

"Yeah, well, like I said. Let's dance."

"Wait," Sam cuts in. Sam finally cuts in. "Dean, wait."

Dean doesn't want to wait. He's spent months waiting, and he's done with waiting for shit to blow up in his face. He wants to get in front of something for once, and if that something's a Knight of Hell, or the Mark of Cain, then all the better. And he can't afford to wait anymore. Because right now he's the kind of heart-pounding exhausted that feels like it's somewhere between a heart attack and an overdose, and if he waits anymore he's gonna crash hard. And people like Kevin, people like Sam, are going to eat shit. 

Dean won't let that happen again. 

He points to the whale steak on the table. "So, this whole thing?" 

Free Willy, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the First Blade--sounds like a great weekend.

"Dean, wait. Maybe we should just call Cas. At the very least, he--"

Crowley shuts Sam down. "Bioengineering is not under God's purview. Of the many insane things your feathery friend is willing to do for you, this is not his sandbox." Then he readjusts the rumple in his suit and motions for Dean to sit. 

Dean doesn't.

Sam scowls and folds his arms against his chest. "Yeah, because you know so much about angels. You're not exactly part of the mile-high club, Crowley." 

"Ah, but we were bunkmates in the quest for Purgatory. And Castiel was not the one managing our Alphas, was he. I was the one with the menagerie, and I have all their answers. And yes, of course the whole thing. Now sit."

Dean does. Which, fuck Crowley, but he's starting to lose the adrenaline spike, and sitting doesn't really sound inherently bad. He feels sick to his stomach before he even looks at the whale steak again. Whole thing, huh?

He doesn't even like sushi. 

"I said _wait_."

Which, fuck Sam, too, but Sam's not talking to him; all Sam's focus is on Crowley, and Crowley returns the attention. 

Dean should be a part of this, he knows. If anything, he should be the biggest part of this discussion, since he's the puzzle piece in question. But that rush of guilty endorphins has abandoned him, and he can't fucking do it, can't bring himself to rise to the occasion. How the hell he's managing to third wheel his own species dysphoria, or whatever Crowley'd said, is a puzzle for another rainy day. It's like everything keeps sliding in and out of focus. He's fucking tired.

"Wait all you like, Moose," says Crowley. "But while you're chewing your cud let's get this spell started, shall we? We've a long way to go from dick to Moby."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam asks, when Dean doesn't.

"It means if you want your brother alive at both points A and B, you might consider reading the dosage and doing this in stages. You're familiar with the concept of a whale, yeah? And with not-human? There's a reason it's called magic, not a miracle. Do I have to explain this to you?"

"Gabriel turned me into a car fairly painlessly," Sam points out. "Also not human. And apparently not that hard."

"And you think you're still an angel? As I said, Cain, the First Blade, this ocean--not your sandbox." Crowley says. "Besides, staking the world on cheap alterverses and quick fixes doesn't sound very Winchester, now does it."

Dean bristles at the insinuation, but like he said, he's fucking tired; he doesn't really care. If Sam does, hell, he can do whatever he wants. Dean's got other things on this plate right now. (It's just so... _raw_. Was there a reason they couldn't pan-sear this real quick?)

But, jaw tight, Sam doesn't rise to the bait. "How long do we draw out the spell?"

"There's my--" Crowley stops and revises. "You're a product of intelligent design, after all. Safely, I'd err on the end of twenty-four hours. Proportionate snacks at regular intervals, that sort of thing."

"And which ocean are we headed to?"

"Miami, I hope," says Dean. Hey, it's something. At least he said something.

Crowley rolls his eyes. "You know nothing about the world, do you. Would it kill you to have logged some time in the Pacific Northwest?" 

Sam bites his lip. But if anything, Sam's overcompensating. Dean's not sure what his problem is; it's not like he's the whale part of this equation. And if he's doing the road math, he shouldn't have to. They'll make it; he should know that by now. 

But Sam says, or attempts to say, "Those twenty-four hours. What'll-- How does--" In the end he lands on, "Will it hurt?"

Which probably still isn't exactly what Sam meant to ask. They've been in the game long enough to know that yes, of course it will; and no, it doesn't matter. But it makes Dean wish Sam would meet his gaze, or that he could meet Sam's, or something. He wishes he could--

But he doesn't lift his eyes from the table.

He says, "Don't answer that." 

He faces off against his whale steak one more time. Drive hard, commit early, strike first.

And it's funny, really. Dean's sampled hex bags, potions, food he knew was cursed. Other's people's hair. Hell, food he knew had gone bad. Leviathan specials. Phoenix ash. Sam still won't tell him all the ingredients in that vampire cure, and it's not like that dog potion had been a chocolate milkshake, either. But put a sea creature in front of him and he still balks. He tells himself it looks a little like venison. Whales were mammals, right? Dean's had a couple last suppers, up to and including deep-dish with Death, but this is up there. After all that bluster, he's not actually sure if he can eat this. 

To his credit, it's from Crowley's House of Crapcakes, and it's going to turn him into a whale. This is a little hasty, even for them. And if this goes the way the Mark has so far, well. Dean has his reasons to be concerned. 

But whatever Crowley's other demerits, he was right about Kevin. Dean hadn't tried to save him, not with all the tricks in their bag. He hadn't been able to protect him, hadn't tried hard enough or given enough of a damn. And then he hadn't even thought about it. He's not sure if he'd been unwilling to pay, or afraid for the inevitable thorny lining, but this he knows: They're not gonna get very far if they start hedging their bets now. The ante's up. (He's fucking sorry, Kevin.)

"This. This is why Hell has force-feeding." Crowley snaps his fingers impatiently. "Full disclosure: Magic pre-dates Michelin stars. What do you want, a baked filet?"

Dean glowers. He pulls a knife from his belt and butterflies it open, prepares to saw off a nib. Crowley clicks his tongue and Dean goes for nugget-sized instead. 

Down the hatch. 

Dean jams it so far to the back of his throat his gag reflex nearly preempts him. He chews. He wants to say it tastes fishy but he can't remember the last time he had fish. Mostly it's just fleshy. Gamey, for sure. Slightly coppery. And there's something in it that goes down like a razor blade. It feels sharp until the pain starts to radiate, and then it's just hot--a burning sensation all the way down.

And possibly back up. He must be making a face, because Sam tries a "Dean?" and sounds worried. 

He sounds worried but at some point he'd drifted to Dean's left, and he's cutting the rest of Dean's whale into nibs. 

So Dean keeps going. He redirects all he's worth to ignoring the roiling in his gut and in his heart, and the way his teeth sing "fire!" in their gums and his tongue's ritual suicide as he grabs a new mouthful of nibs.

Sam startles when Dean's hand swoops that close to his knife (Ruby's, Dean notes, which would be disgusting except he's not actually sure where his tac's been, either). But by the time Sam jerks back Dean has chewed and swallowed. 

He grabs another mouthful. 

He's not even thinking about the taste anymore. It's raw and slippery, but Dean can believe it's tender, and juicy, and worth it, though the afterburn is still something piquant and feral, either too-fresh or definitely rotten. He tastes blood and he thinks about fire. It does not, at first, remind him of the sea. But few things do. Then he loses himself to the pattern, the rolling of his jaw and the turning of his stomach morphing at his synapses; it turns to the pull of the ocean, water sucking at barnacled piers and shaggy algae. Everything hurts and maybe it's not fire after all, maybe the ocean, the whale, the spell, all of it, maybe it just burns cold.

Then someone's calling his name. There's a pain in his hand, pins and needles. A numbness in his body. The pressure relents then comes crashing back down, and the needles multiply. Dean feels a tingling in his lips and under the scruff, his cheeks itch.

"Shut up, Crowley." It's Sam. Apparently Crowley said something. 

Sam's hand is mashed over Dean's wrist, pinning him to the War Table. With his other hand, Sam sweeps the half-eaten whale steak away from Dean. The juices sluice in the opposite direction and spill towards him, across the table's lacquered surface.

"Dean," Sam says. (Sam says again?) When he's finished cleaning up, whale wrapped tight in its paper and in Sam's hands, not Dean's, Sam releases him. Dean wants to say his wrist is sore, and fuck, a little overboard, Sam?, but mostly everything is numb and number.

He eyeballs the package in Sam's hand. All things considered, he'd done pretty well with the steak. He hadn't even realized he'd eaten that much. And he doesn't understand why they're stopping.

"Dean, hey. Hello!" Then Sam's crouching eye-level with him, snapping his big obnoxious fingers in Dean's face.

"Fuck, _what_?" Dean snaps irritably. "I could have kept going," he insists.

Sam swallows. There's a hiccup, or an omission, and Sam opts for, "Yeah, but we _are_ still in Kansas, and I'm not hauling a whale up 218. Remember? the word 'gradual' ringing any bells?"

"Whatever, Toto."

"You're going to want to put that on ice, by the way. Nobody likes a rancid whale." Crowley interrupts, and waves offhandedly at the packaged whale in Sam's merciless grip. 

Sam sucks in breath. "Tell me why you're still hanging around, Crowley. Don't you have a 'kingdom' to win back?"

"Fuller disclosure," Crowley continues, sucking in the smell of dead guy oak and dead guy letter and, hopefully, a lot of dead guy Fuck You. "Magic like this isn't DIY; you'll need an attending who understands the art. I may have generously volunteered." 

Crowley turns circles around their chairs, runs his hands along the edge of their table. Dean doesn't understand why Crowley feels like he has to get his hands on goddamn everything. Maybe because it's driving Sam crazy; though why Sam's letting that happen is beyond him.

Dean tries to keep the room from spinning. Dean's feeling a little more alive now--or a little less alive. He feels more normal now.   
When the spinning stops, he'll stand. He'll have a drink. All will be well.

But the room still resembles a pinwheel when Crowley moves directly in front of Dean, so close his pants leg brushes against Dean's knee. Beyond the confirmation of touch he's just a muddle of black and mahogany and tile. 

Let the world spin then. Dean's still getting up, and he still wants his drink.

"Of course, this is me assuming you wanted a way back," says Crowley. "Maybe you don't need a counterspell."

Dean doesn't look at Sam, and doesn't answer the question. But he does finally push himself out of the chair, backwards and away from Crowley. 

Dean must wobble, because Sam grabs his elbow. Dean jerks out of his hold and his hands find the back of the chair he'd been sitting in. The dizziness lets go. Or doesn't let go. But he swallows it down and it jitters in his heart and throat instead. If he weren't gripping the chair so hard, he imagines his hands would be shaking. Which is all kinda how he started this morning off in the first place, and breaking even's not so bad.

In the periphery of his vision, Sam creeps up on him--the place where hallucinations usually find harbor. It's disorienting.

Then Sam's pushing his way between Dean and Crowley and picking up Dean's coat, which makes Dean feel claustrophobic and a little like an invalid. But Sam doesn't hand him the jacket, just drops it onto the War Table adjacent the puddle of whale juice after he's extracted the car keys, and that makes him feel a lot like an invalid.

"What the hell are you doing, Sam."

"Are you ready to go?"

"Sam--"

Dean jumps after him, as Sam beelines it for the stairs down to their bedrooms. He's about to grab the back of Sam's shirt, or maybe his hair, and turn this into a violent altercation, when he changes his mind and swings back around to Crowley. "Touch anything and die."

Sam's waiting for him at the bottom of the stairwell. 

He says, with very conscious restraint, "I think this is a stupid plan."

"Noted and discarded. What else you got?"

"I hate Crowley."

"Great. We're on the same page."

"Are you?" Sam questions. He adjusts the keys in his hand. The jangle is piercing and Dean can almost taste their metal, hot and sweaty. 

"What, are you jealous of him?"

He just wants the keys back. He wants his goddamn keys.

"No, I mean." Sam gesticulates vaguely. "Are you _on_ a page? Any page?" 

If he means just now, with the spell and the whale juju and all that crap, Dean really couldn't tell him. If he means this morning, he should know better. If Sam means last night, and Stillwater, and Garth, and his stint with Crowley and Cain in Missouri, Sam doesn't really want to know. And if he means anything, at any point, before, Dean doesn't want to talk about it. He doesn't fucking know, and that's all he's got. 

He takes a deep breath.

"I didn't see a warning label on this particular plan. I mean, besides the usual."

"What, Crowley isn't enough of one?"

"You know, Sam--" 

'You know, Sam' what? You know, Sam, fuck it, mostly. But he's not going to waste his breath; he can't do this right now. Because it doesn't matter if Dean thinks this plan will work or not, if Crowley's screwing them or not, if he even disagrees with Sam on any particular point or not. They don't have the luxury of a Plan B; hell, they're probably starting with X. And they just gotta own it. 

"You know, Sam, I know what I'm doing. It's my body."

Sam laughs, like he's really, actually stupefied by this. Completely and furiously awestruck. "Seriously? That's your defense?"

He's not gonna do this in a stairwell; not with the King of Hell upstairs, not when they're T - 24 and counting. What other options that leaves, Dean's not sure. "Sam-- fucking--"

"Don't--"

"Just give me the keys!"

Sam yanks them away from Dean's grab. "Why?"

"Because you're not yelling at me about the car! Fuck, Sam--"

"I'm not yelling at you. _We_ 're arguing. And I'm not done."

"Apparently you are." If Sam thinks Dean is above jumping for his keys, he's fucking miscalculated. Because Dean does jump, and he snatches them from Sam's hand, and he shoves past Sam and down the hall. He stumbles only slightly before the lightheadedness abates. Sam lets him go.

And Dean says, "If you're not in the car in ten, I will leave you behind."

\--

Except Dean's not at the car in ten. And he's not in his own room, but Kevin's. It's been months (a month? three weeks?) since anyone's been inside, and the stale air can testify to that. But there's still fossilized bread crusts on the desk, the bed's unmade, there's a selection of drab clothing piled in front of the closet. The books and all the paper are meticulously, if mysteriously, organized. The rest of the room is lived in; a shitshow; lived in by someone whose life was a shitshow.

Even then, Kevin's tools of the trade are too easy to locate; corner of the dresser, easily accessible from both the desk and the bed. Dean reappropriates his bottle of pills--green for pep--and immediately dry swallows several.

He should have chewed them, he thinks, as he pockets a few more. (Contingency.) 

He wonders if they're the kind of thing where that would make them work faster. He's surprised he's never tried before. The bottle says not to.

The bottle's almost empty. Well, Kevin can't say Dean never gave him nothing.

Dean sits down on the bed, even though it's creeping with Kevin's memory. He closes his eyes against the headache building low in his forehead and tries not to hurl. 

He wonders if it's too soon to regret this whole plan. To start over halfway through Minnesota. Or maybe halfway through last year. Or three decades ago.

Because he's tracking out how many miles it must be between the bunker and the bottom of the ocean in fucking Washington or wherever and he must be getting old because it feels like too many. They just got back from that whole fish taco thing, and Dean hasn't even figured out how to get to sleep yet, he hasn't figured out what to say to Sam yet, he doesn't know how to listen to Sam yet. He'd sort of been looking for new ways forward, for Sam's sake--or as Sam puts it, for Dean's own sake--but the hell with it. When hadn't old habits served him well fucking enough. 

(Every when, he thinks. Probably every single when. But hey, he's still here.)

He doesn't remember when he last slept, but he remembers the 600 miles back from Stillwater, the three days in Stillwater, the 600 miles to Stillwater, and it's sort of a haze before that, but the haze involved Wisconsin, and werewolves, and Garth. If they hadn't obediently trucked it back to the bunker, if they'd poked around in Wisconsin a little longer, Stillwater sure would have been closer. 

No, Dean amends. If they hadn't had the bunker they'd have found a case in New Mexico instead, or somewhere equally stupid. That's kinda their style. It'll probably always be their style. If you log enough miles on the road, you stop remembering any of them. It's a decent way to pass the time.

Dean jolts. He'd drifted off for a second, only to be shocked out of sleep by the sense of falling. 

He's awake now, the hair on his arms standing pathetically on end. And they no longer have any time to pass.

Beneath the hair, in the crook of his right arm, the mark burns. Not in the caustic, superficial sense, the way it sometimes does, but with a deep hot bone ache Dean hasn't felt since Cain himself. It makes him want to snap his arm open and drink out all the marrow, though that thought doesn't keep the whale down any better. 

But he's not sure where one thing ends and another starts anymore. Could be he's just tired, and everything else is an elaborate hallucination. It wouldn't be the first time. But he'd have to be an idiot to chalk up every stupid thing he's done to sleep deprivation. If he'd found something to drag him under for a full night's sleep he'd still have taken the mark. He'd still have Abaddon and Crowley and all of fucking Heaven on his To Do list. He'd still have given his brother to some Criss Angel douchebag. He's said as much.

There's no time, anymore, to meander. It's all just straight flumes--ride them or drown.

Dean's done enough praying for a lifetime, but he does shoot off a text message to Cas while he waits for the drugs to kick in. He hasn't asked Sam where Cas is, or where he'd gone after Dean left them, but Sam seems hale-ish, and he'd said something about grace and removing it, and all of that had to be Cas's doing, so Dean assumes nothing drastic happened. Of course, if Cas wanted to answer a text message, ever, Dean wouldn't mind that either.

He waits for normal. He waits for wakefulness. He waits for himself.

This whole--everything--is going to shit altogether too quickly, he thinks. And he thinks, the world just needs to take a moment and stop spinning, and he'll be fine. He could be fine. At the very least it needs to move just slightly slower than he is, because he feels outpaced; he feels like shit keeps piling up before he gets to the loading dock, no matter what he does. He doesn't know why the fuck he keeps lashing out at Sam; that can't possibly make shit better. He doesn't know why he keeps justifying himself to Sam, even when he knows that won't do shit. The kicker being, of course, that knowing that doesn't keep that whole mind game from making perfect sense. Half the time he wakes up and it still makes perfect fucking sense. He sees Sam's face, and he sees the way Sam looks at him, and he knows he's fucked up; he can look at himself in the mirror and know he's fucked up; but every other day he'll do the same damn things and it feels like all he'll ever know is how goddamn right he is. He needs time to figure things out, he just--

Nah, he thinks. He knows this game. Bullshit expands to fill the space it's given. He keeps sitting here, and it's just gonna build and build, like some comfortable homebody. Take this morning, for instance. It was a whole fucking mess, and one that wouldn't have happened if they'd been on the job, Dean's certain. If he'd been more on top of his shit. He hasn't had a flashback like that in over a year, and some dumb thing Sam says late at night should be able to tip him like that. It's pathetic.

But when Sam _says_ things like that, when he announces he wouldn't do every single damn thing to save Dean's ass, how the fuck is Dean not supposed to think about Purgatory. 

Whatever. It doesn't matter. Bygones, and all.

He just needs to drive hard, any direction. He needs to drive hard and outrun everything. Cross that finish line, and forget anything else until he gets there.

He needs to get a fucking grip.

"Dean?"

Dean swims to alertness. He blinks a few times before cocking his head towards Sam. Get a grip, get a grip.

"Oh. Hey," he says. Great start, Winchester.

Sam's got plenty of anger riding in him still, Dean's sure, but either Sam doesn't want it or he's not sure what to do with it, because he sure as hell ain't acting on it. All he says is, "Are we, uh. Are we going?"

Dean pauses. If Sam can put it away, he can put it the fuck away, too. Clean slate, screw everything. He can put on whatever face he wants. And don't doubt for a minute he's not gonna try. "Yeah. I just--" 

Just go back to page one: "What the hell did you pack? You planning an expedition?"

Sam raises his eyebrows at the shift in Dean's demeanor. But he just shrugs the straps of his backpack higher up onto this shoulder and bumps a small cooler against his thigh. 

There's a weekend supply of whale in there.

"You know, stuff," Sam says. "We don't know what we're walking into, so I want to be prepared."

"Well, I'm sure your Boy Scout pocket knife and your lashing kit will be useful as hell, Sam."

"Raise me, then. What're you looking for in here?"

Dean moves to gesture at the pill bottle, but the mark burns and his arm feels leaden, suddenly very heavy, numb again; he lets it drop halfway and tries to ball his hand into a fist. "Just some things I lent out," he offers instead.

Sam's gaze flicks quickly over Dean, the room, and the bedside table. "Dean."

"What."

"You need actual rest."

"Fine. Then I won't take any." 

This mollifies Sam, though Dean can already feel the uptick behind his eyes, body dredged out of exhaustion and thrown back up into a chemical high. If Dean doesn't feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he's certain he's more with it than Sam is right now; after his mote of relief fades, Sam looks mostly concerned, confused, and distracted. 

"So how long are you planning to red-eye it? I'm just sayin', there's nothing wrong with a little help," Dean points out.

"I'm hoping we can make this short and sweet. We'll still have Abaddon and Crowley to deal with afterward."

"Oh, you're _hoping_ for something."

Sam's expression flatlines. "As I said earlier, I'm planning for something a little different. You're all over the map, Dean."

Dean is Sam's favorite non sequitur and he knows it, so he's not actually sure if the two statements are supposed to relate to each other not. But 60/40 they do, and 95/5 Sam expects Dean to say, "I'm fine."

So Dean says, "I'm fine."

And Sam says, "That's what you keep saying."

It's an almost perfect exchange, until Sam belabors the point. "You say that, and you say that. But how am I supposed to know if I don't even have a baseline?"

Because this is clean slate; this is no frills. This is single-minded, to the point, no room for bullshit, business attire. "This is baseline," Dean insists. Fuck everything, "I know what I'm doing. I'm fine."

Dean's not sure why he always pokes the bear, or often even how he's managed to, but he does it every time, it's a gift, and now he knows for sure--Sam is still pretty fucking furious.

"You'd better hope not," Sam mutters. 

"What? I didn't catch that."

Sam glowers. The fire between them ignites so quickly, like a natural instinct. Dean can catch Sam's teeth working at the inside of his lip; and for the last time, he doesn't fucking know why, but this all feels like victory.

But Sam doesn't shout. He sounds almost sad. "You can do better than this."

"Inspirational." But there's a strange lilt to his own voice also, strange enough that even Dean can hear it. And maybe it doesn't all feel like victory, or maybe Dean doesn't want to win, or something, he doesn't know, he just.

Sam must flag it, too, because he says, "What?"

"Nothin'." No lilt this time--just garden variety mouthiness. 

"Let me have the keys," says Sam, before Dean can say more. 

Sam has this deprived puppy look he falls into sometimes, and it _gets_ to Dean; it always gets to him.

"The keys," Sam repeats. "You need sleep."

"Hmm." Dean thinks about that. The keys bite into his palm. And he says, somewhat dreamily, "You know, there was this one time."

He looks everywhere but Sam. 

"You were just a baby. But Dad got done splinting my wrist or something and he must've gone into the kitchen to get a beer, 'cause he found you sitting in front of the mini fridge eating the center out of all the bologna. He was so fucking mad. And it wasn't even my fault, you know? 'Cause something had practically just broke my hand off."

Dean chuckles, but Sam's still on guard. He shifts his feet uncomfortably. Dean continues, "When he snatched all that bologna away, you cried and cried; you wanted it so bad. And I'm looking at you like, this is a fucken tragedy. You wanted it so bad."

"Uh," says Sam.

"Every sandwich I brought to school that whole week had this little baby doughnut hole in the middle of it. We shoulda just got bagels."

"Right." Sam downshifts from guarded to quizzical. "But uh, what's with the memory lane?"

Dean shrugs. This doesn't feel like a victory. This does not feel like a victory anymore. "I dunno. We're out of food now, too. Isn't that what you said? I could go for a bagel."

"What, with lox on it? You suddenly craving salmon?"

Dean snorts, and Sam almost grins, too.

"Aw, look at you," says Dean. "Sammy's cracking jokes now."

But he shouldn't have said anything; should have just let it be. Because 'Sammy' has the wrong taste to it, too, and Dean watches as Sam's mouth greets the flavor with an illegible twist. 

Well, it was nice while it lasted. 

"You know, you _loved_ Free Willy," Dean says, because apparently he just doesn't know when to shut his mouth. But he opens his palm and flips the keys up to Sam.

"What? I definitely didn't love Free Willy," says Sam, and catches them. "Okay, seriously, man. What's up with you?"

"We saw that movie like, a thousand times. You loved that movie."

Sam frowns. He registers the deflection, but doesn't push it. "No, Dean, we saw the trailer a thousand times. On TV."

"Yeah, and you were always excited! You wanted to see that movie so bad--"

"I wanted to see _a_ movie. Any movie! I just wanted to get out." 

Sam shoves the keys in the pocket of his jeans--and he's got a real shirt on now, too; he must have changed. Huh. He's always so slow to spot Sam's changes.

"I wanted to get out, Dean," Sam repeats, when Dean does not respond.

And Dean says the only thing he can think of. "Why didn't you just tell me?"

Sam gestures toward the door, asking Dean to lead. Sam switches out the light and closes the door on Kevin's memory. 

They're halfway to the garage before Sam replies, "You were supposed to want it, too."

Dean doesn't answer. 

Crowley's waiting for them at the car. He's the first to speak. "Gentlemen, you've been holding out. This dungeon has a bidet."


	3. Chapter 3

Dean watches the display on the gas pump tick upward, a steady climb toward $70, and then $80, and wonders when the fuck gas got so expensive.  It almost makes him want to eat the bagel Sam hands him--complete with cream cheese and lox--because otherwise that's another $5 wasted.  But he is worlds away from hungry.  He's full-up on enough pep and whale and Mark of Cain to last a lifetime, or whatever's left of it.  

Sam wanders and paces like a sleepwalker.  He still hasn't looked up from his phone; he's been pawing through the Internet since the moment they hit town, if that's what Nebraska's allowed to call a gas station, a strip mall, and two trailers.  

"I think we know more about wendigo than these guys know about killer whales," Sam mutters.

"Well, Sam, it _is_ the Internet.  The Internet's always full of crap."

"It's NOAA."

"What, with the ark?"  Dean hands Sam a hundred dollar bill, and Sam takes it without breaking his digital concentration.

"Sure, Dean.  With the ark."

Dean watches Sam weave through the pumps and other cars toward the mini mart, head still bowed over his touchscreen, until he disappears inside.  Dean should probably be on research detail, too--hell, he's had three hours of Nebraska to stare at, riding shotgun and failing to sleep.  

He tells himself he wouldn't have slept, with or without the drugs.  And it's not like they're a new thing, and undeniably Dean's more useful this way.  As lies go, it's not that bad if it's only doing good.  But then he tells himself what Sam says he's telling himself, and he hates what he keeps fucking doing.

Unlike Sam's phone, Dean's is uninteresting.  Still no word from Cas.  

Dean shoots off yet another text.  If Cas died, Dean thinks, they'd have no way of knowing; these days angels are tatted up the wazoo, so summoning's behind the times.  They'd seriously have to wait for someone to come and gloat at them.  

If Dean dies, it'd probably take even longer to get the message around.  For a name with so much supernatural street cred, it's not exactly parade material when a Winchester smokes out; longevity's their only selling point.  There hadn't been anyone in the damn world who'd cared when Sam was dying, after all.  Just Dean.  Even the grief counselor hadn't cared about Sam--just Dean (at least, before she'd tried to off him, too).  

But for Sam, it'd just been him.  That guy who missed the memo.

Ignored the memo, Dean amends.  The brother who ignored the memo, who's now that guy, playing it through to the end.

Dean's inbox is still empty.

"Good," says Crowley, peering around his shoulder.  "He's still an angel, you know.  You can't know what kind of hold Metatron has over him.  When you step into a legend this old, even I have trouble telling the difference between Heaven and Hell."

"Was there ever one?"

"Dean, I'm touched."

"It's not a compliment.  You're all sons of bitches."

"Why? Because Gadreel got one over on you?  Where's your sense of sportsmanship?"

Dean chuffs.  Sportsmanship? yeah right.  The system's rigged.

"You should have known better; surely this is all rather Pavlovian by now.  What were you doing?  What did you think would happen?"

Dean lets the accusations settle and evaporate.  He doesn't need to get this from the outside too: It's already messy; making it noisy doesn't help.

In the meantime, Crowley scoops Dean's bagel off the roof of the Impala, napkin translucent with grease from (--actually, Dean's not sure what part of that bagel should be greasy. None of it?)

"Get your hands off my bagel, Crowley."

Crowley takes a churlish mouthful.  

"I'm a tradesman, not a charity.  I've a treat for you, too, remember?"  He gestures toward Sam's cooler in the back seat, but Dean doesn't bother following the motion.  

Instead, Dean peeks at his phone again--nothing--and watches for Sam--nope--and finally, turns back up to the sale price on the gas pump.

"For this kind of gas mileage you may as well have invested in a decent Bentley, you know," says Crowley.  "Though clearly you've a fetish for high prices and low payouts."  And he gestures more expansively toward the cooler.

Sam's still tied up in the mini mart.  Dean waits for the door to swing open, for that familiar two-tone step down--faint and benthic, almost silent under the growl of engines and the slamming of other people's car doors--but it doesn't come on cue.

Crowley follows Dean's line of sight and train of thought.  "What, are you waiting to be spoon-fed?  And because we're besties, you should know that I'm getting very mixed signals from you.  Are you using Sam, or trying to spare him?"

"Crowley, if I wanted narration, I'd be narrating."

But Dean dips into the backseat, hacks off about three hundred miles worth of whale, and chews well.  After a couple minutes Sam resurfaces out of the mini mart, and by that time the ordeal is just a chill in his gums when he sucks in wintery Nebraska air, a fluttering in his arms and in his chest.

Sam watches his back as he crosses the gas station, quickly appraising their fellow travelers, the makes of the cars, and finally Crowley, Dean's bagel, the cooler, and Dean.  He seems satisfied by Dean's appetite (Crowley had made short work of half the bagel), his calm--his sanity, humanity, whatever else Sam thinks he's got a rubric for.

But there's something else, too; he's not just being his nosy, restive self, Dean realizes.  Sam's pulse is up, and his shoulders rising with each of his quick, deep breaths.  

"Guy at the register was a demon," Sam pants, matter-of-factly.  It's a strained sort of calm; Dean catches the past tense.  "And I think we're being followed."  

Then Sam turns to Crowley.  "Fuck you for that."

Crowley rolls his eyes.  "Fullest full disclosure:  Abaddon might be onto us."

Sam swears. "Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

"Do you _not_ walk out the door automatically assuming Abaddon might want to kill you?"

"She's onto you, Crowley.  Not us," Sam snaps.  "We're warded.  And by the way, I looked up your Kwa-- your Kwa'ka--" Sam pauses again.  "I looked up your myth.  If the story checks out, it means we're headed all the way up to the border."

"Over the border," Crowley corrects, fountain of belated information that he is.  "You've thrown in your chips, and Abaddon's onto all parties interested in offing the broad.  Ergo, to Canada we flee."

"Why the fuck didn't you--"

"Why the border-hopping? She scared of Canadians?" Dean scoffs.  

"I _own_ Canada.  Your friend Dick Roman and I had a deal.  And though he's since joined the masses of Winchester-related dearly departeds, Canada's still mine.  We wouldn't be the first hunted party to bury our heads in the territories." 

Sam doesn't take well to any of this new information, and Dean can tell he's doing the math again:  Wyoming plus Montana plus Idaho plus Washington plus Canada plus Abaddon minus a cooler of whale, a full tank of gas, and Team Not This Again.  That strained calm of his tangles visibly.

Sam punches something into his phone with unnecessary force.  "Fuck it.  Are we done here? Are we going?"

"Are you?" Dean asks, gesturing towards Sam's phone.  He can't make out the text, but there's a pictogram of something with fins on the screen.

Sam digs into his pocket and flips Dean the keys.  "Here, congratulations," he says, and haphazardly rounds around to the other side of the Impala.  

Dean lights up.  That's all he needs right now--any more and it's overkill. He just needs to drive, make some kind of measurable progress.  

They dump themselves into the car, and Dean keys up the engine.  "Where to?" he asks.

"Wait.  How much does Abaddon know, Crowley?" Sam interrupts, still looking at his phone.  "Does she know about the spell?"

Crowley smugly adjusts his suit as he comports himself in the backseat.  "Regarding the spell, she hasn't the faintest.  You don't find that kind of thing on Search the Web," Crowley explains, pointedly eyeing Sam's phone.  "It's a Crowley original.  But Abaddon knows you, and she knows you're on the move.  And that's all that matters.  Right, Dean?"

Okay, so he walked right into that one.  But Dean doesn't waver. They're on the fucking clock.

"Where to?" he repeats.

\--

This side of the continental divide's not exactly whale country, but it's beginning to feel like it is.  The clouds gather like limpet mines, and the mountains fade into them in facets of dark and white until the evergreens just look like columns of heavy kelp suspended in blue white water.  There's snow on the ground, tarmac dark where the road salt's melted it away, but between that and the low fog they could be driving through ocean as far as Dean's concerned.  The thin streams of icy air that seep through the window seals become currents and the twist of faulty purchase on the ice feels like tide.

Dean's mouth tastes fishy and his gums tingle.  It feels less allergic than the first dose, but that's not necessarily a comfort.

He just needs to drive.  Eat miles and run.  To "Victoria," wherever that's supposed to be--a whole lot north and a whole lot west.

In the meantime, Sam fills their silence with an encyclopedic recitation of everything Noah and his World Wide Web have to offer on killer whales--or orcas, as Sam says.  Orcas which aren't whales so much as dolphins.  When he's burned through all the juice in his phone, he commandeers Dean's, and continues to explain the care and feeding of dolphins.  Orcas.  Whatever.  They're toothed whales, and there's actually a lot of different myths about them out west. 

Dean's still stuck on dolphins.  He's liking the sound of all of this less and less.

"Do you find echolocation intuitive?" Crowley pipes up from the back seat, as though Dean's silence were an invitation to join in.

"Do I _what?"_

"Not part of the John Winchester survival standards, I take it.  What about whalesong, then?"

"Do I look like Yanni to you?"

"Enya, at best.  Don't flatter yourself."

"No, shut up, this is good," Sam interjects.  "Get this--even though killer whales do have recognizable calls, they're not that talkative.  And if they're hunting, they're basically silent.  So I mean, you don't have to fake a language, right?  That's good." Sam says.

It's good if you're actually interested in being a whale, which Dean isn't; he's gonna be a fake whale just long enough to take delivery on a real blade.  He's not planning to socialize.

"You're not dropping me off at finishing school, Sam.  Lay off."

But Sam ignores him.  "And here's a list of stuff that's edible to killer whales.  Apparently your diet differs depending on what kind you are, and where you are, so don't eat any weird shit.  We're headed for the northern Pacific, so--"

"Sam, shut up."

Dean slams on the brakes at an unexpected knot of traffic up ahead.  Some kind of rockfall, probably.  They finally get clear of the plains and this is what happens--dumbasses who don't know how to drive.  And it's a little late for not eating any weird shit.

"I guess you'd be a transient killer whale... those ones move around in smaller groups.  The resident kind don't migrate often, they're the ones with the big pods.  But you'll--"

"Sam, I'm not planning to go for authenticity, here.  I just want to get in, get out--"

"--you'll be alone."

"Sam."  Dean bites his tongue testily.  "What part of all this is supposed to be helpful?"

Sam stiffens.  His tone is cool and hard and business.  "Forget I said anything, then."

"Okay," Dean answers automatically and immediately.  It hurts, but filling that space with white noise makes whatever's left between him and Sam feel numb and dull.  Luckily Dean's been developing a taste for both of these.  He pulls the Impala out of a skid, but the sudden tension inside the car doesn't dissipate.

It's not okay.  Nothing is okay about any of this. 

When they bump up against the traffic again--travelers rubbernecked at a single-car collision with a guardrail; not much to see, though Dean notes the car's not coming back from that one--Dean asks to see his phone.  He shoots off another quick text to Cas, and glances at the webpage Sam's been reading.

It's more about killer whales than Dean ever wanted to know.  Blah blah seals, blah blah social pods, blah blah communication blah blah lots of teeth.  But mostly: _You'll be alone._

He'll be alone.  

Crowley must have this phone out, too, because he bulldozes ever onward from the backseat, a scratchy drone Dean does his best to ignore.  "Spy hopping... fluke smacks... Have you developed your lower back muscles?"

Fuck this traffic.  

Dean dips them off the highway and onto a service road.  It's a winding single lane, designated only by an SR and a number, but it's well-maintained.  It crawls up into the forest in a direction he thinks he might remember.  Somewhere around here, either over these mountains or several tens of miles backward, there's a gate to Hell.  This is not the first time they've crossed Wyoming under duress, and this part of the state will never stop being familiar. 

Because yeah, he does kind of remember this road.  It had been spring then, spring in full.  They're a little earlier this time, Dean figures; but it's above freezing, the ice isn't too bad, and no one's died yet.  Those are all plusses. 

Dean picks up the pace.  Slowly at first, then more insistently.  Finish lines, he thinks.  He doesn't think about the ocean, or whales, or myths; it's all interchangeable to him.  Just finish lines.

At the back of his neck, he can feel something waver, cold and dark.  His stomach wanders inside him and he gets that feeling again, where he wants to drink his marrow; to relieve pressure; to wash out poison.

He thinks about finish lines.

And Crowley keeps talking.  "You are going to be the mutest, dumbest whale in the history of--"

Finally, Sam drowns him out with the radio.  The volume's set to max from god knows when, whenever they last bothered with it.  It's halfway through an old mixtape that's seen better days.  It's playing the B side, or what's left of it.  It all sounds like plaintive gurgling underwater.  It's a rock band singing about being a rock band--though for once it's not Boston.  Dean recognizes the song, and should know who it is--it's his fucking tape, and it's not like they've been switched out in the last twenty years--but he doesn't.  He can't remember.

Dean turns the radio off.  

There's only room and time for so much shit.

For the first time since Nebraska, there's silence.  There's the whistling of air through the window seals, the roar of the pavement beneath them, small stones tinkling against the undercarriage and drops of snow and wet that fall from the trees when the wind disturbs them.  Dean feels the vibrations of the Impala up his spine and in his jaw and in the cold, dark thing in his head.  None of which is silence at all, he supposes.  Then there's a clear bright sound, like the peal of a tiny bell stretched long and even and perfect, and Dean drives faster.  

Sam asks him a question, but the vowels of it sink into irrelevance almost immediately.  It's about the radio, he assumes.  Or possibly the speed limit.  Or road hazards.  Dean mumbles something about needing to focus.

"On what?" Sam asks.

Dean kicks up the speed.

Whatever Sam reads into that, he punches the radio back on and aggressively twists the tuner until the car fills with something loud and rambunctious and heartbreakingly self-assured.

Dean drives.

Under the music, Dean hears the peal of that small bell--like someone humming, or mumbling their way through lyrics they don't quite know (though he steals a glance, and Sam is tight-lipped, restive, his attention elsewhere).  Moderate reverb, echoing out from so goddamn far away.  There's only room and time for so much shit, and Dean can feel this whole whale thing staking its claim.  

His head's been a demolition zone since time immemorial, but he can feel that leaking elsewhere too, now.  Like things are falling apart but into place.  They are instruments tuning against one another, and following themselves into a wrong key.  Because it is a wrong key, and not just a different one; Dean harbors no delusions about that.  But if that's what gets the job done, then his chords can wheeze and his ears are welcome to bleed all they want.  He is not at liberty to care.  He feels his insides sliding into new alignment, discordant remixes, and he keeps his eyes on the road.  It streams out before them tight and black and serpentine.  

Dean swoops around the corner and the back end goes out again, but he keeps his foot on the gas and they slide through it.  They're at T minus he's not even sure, but they've got a border to hop and an ocean to dredge, and they're gonna make it.

They just need to jump.

Dean brakes before the next turn, clips the apex and rushes the minor straightaway before the road's meander takes them into the next swerve.

Better.   _Now, faster._

Sam makes an inarticulate noise beside him, but there's no follow-through.  It's probably nothing Dean doesn't already know, anyway.  The weather's nothing much, but their traction's not great; they're sliding more than they should be and the Impala could probably use some new tires.  It figures that they finally locate the first garage they've ever fucking had, only to run out of time for it.

But maybe it hadn't been time.  Because Dean's spent plenty of that in the garage, doing not a whole lot.  It seemed ridiculous, to have the freedom and pleasure to mess with the car, keep her purring, give her all she needed when clearly he'd done such a bang-up job on that with Sam.  With Kevin.  If he's got the option to make up for even part of that now, he's not gonna say no.

And hey, the Impala's engine's almost new.  He'd had to build her almost from the ground up after Cas got done playing God, and it's not like Sam was having her rode hard and put away wet when he was in Texas or wherever it was that wasn't Purgatory.  She's got plenty of play she hasn't even begun to tap.  She's been waiting all this time to make things right.

Dean's light on the brakes and early; he wrenches the car into the turn and their rear wheels slide through it.  It's a little slow mid-corner but he gets her back to power quick and they exit nearly at pace.

"Dean--" says Sam.

The next one's not as neat.  But Dean steers into the skid and corrects back onto their sharp black road, their one black road, and he thinks about finish lines.    T minus plenty of time--if he's gonna fucking do this, he's gonna fucking do this.

"Dean!" Sam's voice is thinner this time, and dry.  Dean doesn't take his eyes off the road.  "You nearly sailed us into a tree, dude--"

"What tree?"

They're out of the worst of it; several knobby hills as they gain in elevation and a set of lazier arching curves that tantalize, every time Dean catches sight of them at the crests.  Another hundred miles and they're in Montana, with room to spare. Play it right and it's straightaway all the way out to the coast.  And they are absolutely fucking fine.

They're more than fine.  If there's something Dean loves, in only the best, uncomplicated ways, it's these roads.  It's this engine.  It's his hands on this wheel and his boots flooring the gas and the whistle of air through their shitty, stupid windows--which isn't anything like a bell, or an ache, or a gut-swirling heart-clenching madness.  He'll deal with the end when they get to the end; because why preempt consequence.

Once it hits you, it's not like it's ever going to let you go.

They hit the first arc with all the added momentum of the slope, and the Impala leans heavy on her wheel arches as her two tons swing across her suspension.

"Dean, the car--"  Sam all but yelps.  It's brittle the first time and overharsh the second; he's forced to yell it over the stereo, which has taken a sudden turn towards rock's more metal years.

"The car's fine."

One more clean-ass turn, and they've practically got it in the bag.  Under his breath, Dean whispers, _C'mon, baby._

Flying J, Montana.  Overpriced again.  Too static to be comfortable.  

If they're not doing a hundred westward, they're not going nearly fast enough.

Dean backs up against the trunk of the car and eases himself to sitting, hands braced on his knees.  He just wants to go.

"Care for a dramamine?" Crowley asks, though he hasn't bothered with the mini mart, and he proffers no bottle or blister pack.  Dean glares at him.

"I'm just saying; I've had gentler exorcisms.  You seem agitated."

Dean doesn't dignify that with a response.  They're still not making fast enough time.  That ice and traffic out the starting gate seriously fucked them over; it's hour 14 but only mile six hundred something, and they hadn't made up as much on that service road as Dean had hoped.

As Dean needs.  

He can feel his exhaustion settling in again; more aggressively after Kevin's Little Helpers, and that makes Dean regret keeping even a third of a promise to Sam.  The few in his pocket aren't enough, unless he's planning to crash out in the middle of their boss fight.  And his headache's back, compounded like there's shit rolling around inside him that shouldn't be there.  Not that that isn't true of a normal day--but now it's making its presence known, demanding to be lobotomized or sworn in and welcomed, and Dean knows he can't do either of those.  A third of a promise is infinitely worse than keeping none at all.  Yet here he is.

Bare minimum, he thinks.  What does he need to get them through the next ten hours.

Well, eyeballs are a must and the idea of reflexes is nice.  He's willing to pass on the rest.  They just need to go; they need to go now.  Oh, and a heartbeat--a heartbeat is good to have, too, but if anything Dean's feels a little too loud and a lot too anxious.

They just need to keep rolling.  Drive hard, drive fast.  Topple in a productive direction.  

"Dean, you don't--"  

Dean looks up.  Sam is ambling toward him with a giant wooden hot dog in his hand. 

When Sam's near enough, Dean pokes it.  His hand feels heavy.  "You taking a souvenir?"

 "You don't look so good," Sam finishes.  He pulls the hot dog away, and it jangles.  Bathroom keys.  Then he grabs Dean's arm.  "Come on; let's get something in you."

"Everyone's tryin' to give me drugs," Dean mumbles, as Sam drags him back toward the mini mart.

"What the hell are you talking about?  No one's--  Whatever."

Sam parks them in front of a small refrigerator filled with limp, pre-packaged sandwiches.  Small orange stickers advertise that they're 50% off after 10pm.

"Pick one," Sam orders.

Dean glares at him defiantly and scoops up an armful, presses them into Sam's chest.  "Why skimp out? Let's have a picnic.  Hell, three's company."

Sam, equally defiant, marches the entire stock of sandwiches to the counter, and has the cashier ring up two coffees as well.  As their cashier--whose name, naturally, is Noah--bumbles his way through a series of pings and beeps, Sam asks, without looking back at Dean, "Any word from Cas? Or is four a _crowd._ "

Noah's got nothing on Castiel's mad barista cum money-changer skills, Dean decides.  But Noah's got his perks; his name tag warmly proclaims his perfect attendance here in Ass-end, Montana.  And if Dean's experience is anything to go by, simple attendance is way underrated.  Because while he's sure Heaven and the angelic race or whatever the hell they call themselves are probably in more trouble than two dudes dragging the King of Hell on a Canadian vacation, nothing quells the feeling that Cas is hanging them out to fucking dry. 

"Nothing on my end," he says.

Then Sam shoves a sandwich and a coffee at him and the sheer inadequacy of this, the inadequacy of goddamn everything, comes up in a wave.  Because it's not Cas, or Sam, is it.  Not really.  Dean told Cas to go and he knew--he knew from the moment he let that angel jam itself in Sam's body--that Sam was going to leave him.  Dean hasn't decided yet whether Sam sticking around on the business end is a punishment or courtesy, but it's probably better than he deserves.  But then, Sam did say he was selfish.

So let him be selfish.

He just wants his goddamn brother.

They have ten hours.  Ten hours probably lands them closer to the dry part of Washington than to the ocean, but he told Sam they were gonna make it, and they're gonna make it.  They have ten hours, and Dean just wants his brother.

He downs his coffee.  It's too hot to taste like anything.  "When the situation was reversed," Dean croaks, throat raw and burning.  "You _did_ stop me.  The Apocalypse came knocking and you made sure I didn't answer.  You're the reason I didn't answer." 

_And then you jumped._

"That's not the reverse."  

"I wanted to end it.  You disagreed."

"It's so much more complicated than that."

Dean crushes the coffee cup in his fist and pitches at the trash can outside the Flying J.  Now's not the time nor place for this shit. Noah's starting to eyeball them suspiciously from inside, but fuck all if Dean wants to take this to the car, with King Smarmy in the backseat.

"Everything's complicated, Sam."

 "You weren't dying.  You were _fine_ , Dean--"

And suddenly the car doesn't seem like such a bad idea.  "That was 'fine' to you?"

" _You_ said it was.  You said it was fine, Dean.  How am I supposed to do anything if that's all you ever give me?" This last, Sam shouts, because Dean's halfway across the gas station, and beelining it for the car.

Because if I'm anything else, the world falls the fuck apart, Dean wants to shout back, and doesn't.  The world falls apart, and Sam's domino number fucking one. 

Dean can't put that on him again.  It's not fair.

When Dean hits the car and hastily swallows down his magic whale meat, it almost tastes fucking good.  There's no numbness, though it still burns--at once hot and icy.  It goes down smoother than the coffee, settles in his stomach and makes everything feel calm and distant.  His blood pounds in his ears, minus the thready syncopation from earlier, and he does feel fine.  Fine, awake, on deck.

And scared.

And alone.

But he's supposed to like these things.  They're called freedom.

His hands are still shaking.  Their store of whale is much diminished, and it's too easy to see how fast they're coming up on endgame.  How far they are from the sea.  Maybe he should pare back.  But one more bite, and Dean imagines he could feel pretty fucking good.  Fuck, everything's moving too fast.  Nothing's moving fast enough.  Maybe just one of the pills, instead.  Maybe--

Sam interrupts him.  "Everything's complicated.  Fine.  But Dean, do you know the difference between a suicide and a DNR?" 

"I want to be saved," Dean muffles into the backseat of the car, and closes the cooler.  He doesn't look up.

"What?"

"It means I wanted to be saved," Dean says, clearer.

"Dean, that's not what you said."

Dean sighs, and takes a deep breath.  They got a long night ahead of them.  

"You can put it in whatever tense you want."


	4. Chapter 4

There's nothing to say about Montana.

Sam fights off sleep like it's going to drop him into a nightmare again. And maybe it is (it probably is), but it's not the nightmares he's afraid of. Sleep itself is too comfortable; just before Sam passes out of consciousness he feels the remnants of Gadreel's relief, the cool mist of his presence that encroaches and creeps into the foreground when Sam sleeps. It's with a shock and a jolt that he scrambles out of it, out of that sense of safety, because if there's anything he cannot trust--

He tells himself it's just a memory. There is nothing wrong with rest or calm.

In the end, though, all he can think is that actually, there is. Because if Sam doesn't double down and fill himself with as much information as he can, no one will. If he doesn't hit the books on orcas and orca myths, and the Mark of Cain, and what Dean's supposed to be finding at the bottom of the ocean, only Crowley will--and Crowley's worse than no one. If Sam doesn't gather every single thing he can and throw it into some kind of pattern he can understand, then he's not doing anything, and he can't stand that feeling. He's spent too much time regretting things he should have known already.

Because he should have fought. If Gadreel left trails inside him, he's been leaving them for months. For someone who's spent his life learning to look for paintings that change their form, monsters in hiding, and people who aren't quite right, an angel should have been obvious, and he should have known. But he trusted calm, and he trusted Dean, and he can't let go of how much that trust, that safety, that stupid reticence, has cost everyone around him--how much it's cost him.

When he thinks about Gadreel inside him, he can't help but wonder how the hell he let that happen. How much emptiness did you need to hide an angel inside you? And why hadn't there been enough of him to fill him to the brim, alone.

It's a loose complaint, he knows; physics and metaphysics aren't one and the same, 'volume' in any sense probably doesn't factor in. But Sam feels empty, and he feels useless, and Sam wonders.

They crash westward, the diffused light from the Impala's headlights turning frost and nighttime into an even stream of colorless nothing. The ice mounds lining the highway are gray and long-distorted by the constant splatter of murky backspray, tire-heated.

It doesn't matter how much research Sam does. Like Crowley said, there isn't a myth to follow anymore, or lore to respect. Maybe that's where they started, but they've outstripped what's been written. What they're riding on now is only what they've been able to hobble together out of the refuse. If there was a time when Sam was prepared to stand on that and leap on faith, he's not sure it hasn't passed. He can't seem to keep his focus on Abaddon, and even Gadreel he only hates in phases. They're crashing toward Victoria, and he has this sense that this is the kind of journey they only take one way, but even that can't hold him. He's found he can feel that viscerally, like stones in his chest, and still find himself unable to move on it.

Where Dean falls in all of this, Sam's not sure there's a designated space. Dean injects himself wherever he wants to be, and in places he doesn't even know exist. It's all a little arbitrary anyway, since they're hunting Abaddon but blaming Gadreel, but working with Crowley, and fighting each other. If there's a world where that makes sense--and there is; Sam watches Montana blur into Idaho and there it is--it's the same one where Dean can volunteer to shoulder Sam's guilt, and accept blame, without taking any actual responsibility at all. The one where Sam can be furious and feel utterly betrayed, but never, damningly never, stop trusting.

It's all stupid.

They roll into the bright fluorescence of yet another gas station, even though they still have a quarter of a tank left.

Crowley makes noises about availing himself of the local attractions. "WiFi, weather rock, less suffocating company... no offense."

Everything is still and silent for a moment, his departure a hot breeze at Sam's neck. 

"You can't keep lying to me," Sam says suddenly. Every conversation they have is like a shot in the dark--no follow through. The words just keep getting left on the side of the road. "You can't keep doing this to me."

Dean lets out a soft groan as he heaves himself up and out of the car. He shakes his head as if to clear it.

"I know I can't," he answers.

Of course, there isn't a doubt in Sam's mind that Dean will. _So call him on it, Sam. Hold your ground. Don't let this out of your grasp._

Sam reaches into the back seat and drags the cooler onto his lap. He pokes at the whale steak's limp remainder and thinks of fail-safes until he isn't thinking about anything at all.

Dean's gassing the car until he isn't. His weight comes down on the trunk of the Impala as he catches himself, and Sam dumps himself out of the car. He doesn't call Dean out on anything.

Dean mumbles something half-witty about Free Willy, which is apparently the only whale movie he's even heard of, and claims he's only dizzy.

"And turning into a whale."

Or crashing.

Dean casts a longing glance at the cooler, which is still under Sam's arm. Sam coaxes the car keys out of Dean's fist. "We're still in Montana, man," he says. "We gotta time this--"

"Idaho," Dean corrects. And he says, "D'you think Crowley was talking straight about the whole echolocation thing?"

"Just-- get in the car and think dry thoughts."

But when Sam tracks him down in front of the spirits--cheap scotch--Crowley doesn't have anything better to offer. He has no baseline to work from, either; it's not as though he's had access to Dean's personal and medical histories, and it's not his fault they're almost to hour twenty-four and still landlocked and stateside. Perhaps Rocky and Bullwinkle should have thought ahead more carefully.

"So he's feeling the effects of the spell. At this mile-marker, I wager that's a good thing--he'll have plenty of time to adjust."

"Is that what it is? The spell?"

"What, is there a reason it'd be something else? Or are you keen on D, All of the Above?"

Sam's brow furrows.

"Don't look at me. He's your brother."

"So when you said 'attending,' you meant freeloading. When were you planning to start being useful?"

"Don't undervalue the pleasure of my company; it must get tiresome, always being so alone with your thoughts, Sam. But either your brother skips a dose, or Dean Winchester's role in all this stands to climax altogether too early, doesn't it," he says. "Do you need more from me? Are you that famished for attention?"

Sam doesn't understand why Crowley insists on medicalizing everything. This isn't something Dean needs; it's just a tool he's using. "I've been searching all night. But none of the mythology talks about a blade--they just say 'power,' and whalesong. So what is the First Blade, exactly?"

"It's how you kill Abaddon. And if you're exceedingly lucky, me. What does it matter what the mythology is? You two have already tromped this far. The mythology can't get _more_ bastardized. I don't participate, I appropriate. Did you learn nothing in history class, Sam?"

"Then change me." It's just three words, but they leave Sam breathless and nauseous. He can't let Dean do this alone. There's too much Sam can't count on, too many variables he can't control. There's too much of Dean that Sam can't account for or predict. There's too much of Dean Sam might lose. "Change me, too. Dean's not going alone."

A smile tints Crowley's face. "I suppose that depends on how much you're willing to sacrifice. But I seem to recall a little church in South Dakota that told me you're willing to do quite a bit."

"Yeah, and back then, you weren't so thrilled about it. Don't mess with me."

But Crowley says, "That's not the part I was talking about."

He says, "You are so much like your brother."

Sam's not. He wishes he were and then he's hopelessly glad he's not; but that's always been their problem. "Just change me, too."

"Dean accepted the Mark. Cain is his alone."

"I don't care."

Crowley selects a scotch and samples it, then offers the flask to Sam. "It's possible. Practice does make perfect."

"What do you mean?"

"Merely that you've had plenty of practice being other-than--demons, angels, the fallen Himself. You'd be destined for greatness in the sea."

As ever, destined for greatness. Sam was always meant to be king. Meg, Azazel, Lucifer: They'd all wanted to put their crown on his head, or maybe his on theirs. Even Gadreel wanted to rule the garden again. Sam knows what it means to become something beyond himself, to possess and be possessed. 

It could be faster, and easier than Dean's transformation, Crowley assures him. Because the scaffolding's all still there, isn't it. If he let himself become that one more time, he could join Dean; and together, they'd win this war.

Just one more time.

"Of course," Crowley pauses. And in that moment he seems more a crossroads demon than he's ever been before. It's a stage act and a fire sale. "You'd have to turn in your four-years chip. It's four years since the Apocalypse That Wasn't, isn't it?"

(Gadreel loves the sea.)

But Sam shakes his calm. If it means biting down hard on iron, splintered fear, so be it. "I don't--"

"Sam, if mixing whale meat with some herbs constituted a spell, whales would still rule the ocean. What do you _think_ the active ingredient is?"

Sam swallows. There's a flash of sensation at his throat, hot and metallic all at once. It's not a memory so much as an electric trigger, as the smell and the taste and the temperature flood in and out, like a sleeper wave. It crashes over his entire body and ebbs out of his fingertips, puddles under his tongue.

Of course.

"Does Dean know?"

Crowley's eyebrows slide upward, an expression of mock-consideration Sam's almost certain he borrowed from Dean.

"He never asked."

\--

Sam's answer is no. He doesn't have a choice; it has to be no.

He never says it, but it has to be no. "Meet us in Victoria, Crowley," Sam orders, as he pays for Crowley's goddamn scotch. "I'm not going to be your valet service anymore."

Crowley says something about Abaddon, the presence of her entourage nearby, and paparazzi, but Sam doesn't care. They started all of this to end Abaddon, but he doesn't care.

He must wear his defeat flamboyantly, because as he approaches the car, even Dean notices. 

"Sammy--" he starts, then doubles back, as though he's said something he was not supposed to. "You look like shit."

Dean looks like shit. He's sitting stiffly on the trunk of the Impala, and he looks like even more shit than he did this morning--or is that yesterday, already?--and Sam cannot do anything about it except tell him that it serves him fucking right, that he should feel like shit for all of it, and it's not Sam's fault. But the moment passes him by, and he doesn't say anything. He shoulders past Dean when Dean puts out a halfhearted hand to stop him and slams the door on the driver's side. Guns the engine. They're overdue for ocean.

"Sam." Dean's voice sounds stale, and he croaks when he repeats himself, louder. He sounds fucking exhausted. He flaps another hundred dollar bill at Sam. "Sam, gas station. We didn't pay."

They've paid enough.

"Sam."

Sam stalks back to the mini mart. $67.70. 

Crowley's already gone.

\--

Sam has a plan. At least, that's what he tries to tell himself. But it feels like a lazy consolation, and trying to weave it organically into the conversation he and Dean aren't having is miserable.

"So, uh, I'm coming with you," he says, trying to sound nonchalant. It sounds ridiculous.

Dean looks for a moment like he's going to leave Sam out at sea with this. He's going to pretend Sam hadn't said anything, as though he's hoping Sam too will forget. But he must make a different choice, because he sighs and falls into place, reflexively affecting a similar charade. "If you're worried I'll forget to buy milk, _honey,_ you can write in on a Post-It note. Though maybe you should have thought of this a thousand miles ago, don't you think?"

"I'm serious, Dean."

"As opposed to earlier, when you said you wanted to do damage control. That was just a joke."

"You don't have to be an asshole."

Dean doesn't respond.

"My bag is in the back seat," Sam suggests. But Dean doesn't rise to it. He looks wilted.

"I'll take your word for it," he says.

"Okay, well. There's some scuba gear inside. We just need to rent some other stuff, and I'll come with you."

Nonchalant. Sam is so motherfucking nonchalant right now.

Dean's reaction is wary. " _You_ know how to scuba dive?"

"I learned last year."

His wariness quickly adds incredulity and ridicule to its repertoire. "What, off YouTube? When?"

"When I was living in Texas," he explains vaguely. "We needed a distraction. It's not like we were going to golf."

"Seriously? With her?" And Dean berates him. It's too complicated. It's stupid. It doesn't make any sense. And why the fuck hadn't he brought this up sooner? 

Which, fine, if Dean feels blindsided, that's his right--but welcome to the club. 

The other thing is, Sam knows it's complicated, and he knows it's stupid. Most of his dive experience happened in the deep end of some nearby private college, all of it was in Texas, and all of it took place during one of the longest summers of Sam's life. He's never been deeper than sixty feet, and even if the First Blade isn't in the Mariana Trench, and depth really is as metaphysical as Crowley claims, it's probably deeper than sixty. He doesn't need to be told again how shitty and inadequate this plan is. 

But this is all he has.

He can feel the alternative, hot and wistfully metallic at the back of his throat, and he can't do that.

He's not even sure why it makes him feel so let down, because up until five minutes ago, animal transformation had been the stupidest plan in the room. It's not like it's a prize. But Dean finds his tirade, and it's like he's not even thinking about it enough for it to occur to him to stop; he won't shut up. If he didn't need to breathe, he'd probably just keep going until his voice went out. And there's only so much unfiltered criticism Sam's willing to take.

"You don't even know what you're supposed to be looking for down there, Dean. You're asking me to count on a whale to give a crap about the big picture; like, how the hell am I supposed to trust that you're going to remember anything about the case? Newsflash, _whales don't care_."

It's not even a case; it's an endgame.

"So this is about you and me, then. You don't trust me."

Sam's fucking scared, that's what this is about. He doesn't now what they're going to find in the water. He doesn't even know what's in Dean. But on the other end of this, he wants his brother, and he's fucking scared.

"Give me one damn reason I should, Dean," he says instead. "This is about finishing the job."

Dean deflates visibly. "You're still being stupid. It's never going to work."

"We've hired cement trunks, thrown ourselves in prison, bought out wholesale stores of borax, talked to sentient teddybears, and oh, also we hunted ghosts for a living. And this is the part that's stupid?" 

"We were _younger_ , I don't know--"

"So meeting Dorothy of Oz--that was grown up to you? Talking to dogs? Becoming born-again virgins? Should I keep going?"

Dean takes as kindly to his incredulity as Sam did his. It's like something snaps, and Dean fixes him with a hard, black stare, flinty and impregnable. The derision, inarticulate concern, the hesitation vanish completely. Sam's seen a lot of fury on his brother--and hatred, terror, and despair--but he's never seen this.

"You're going to get yourself killed," says Dean. It sounds more like a threat than an expression of concern.

Sam wants to scream at him, _Then what the fuck are_ you _doing?_ but of course, and yet again, he doesn't. He's been running from that answer for years.

Instead he screams down I-90 and tries to imagine everything they're passing by--what kind of road plants are lying under the snow, what sorts of families lived here, what kind of miracle it would have been if they died peacefully in a world where there were no more demons, and no Hell.

He yelps when Dean droops toward him and digs his phone out from under Sam's ass, but they jump away from each other like polarized magnets. They're just bodies to each other. Dean's hands shake as he checks his messages, so visibly even in the dark Sam catches them.

No messages.

Sam drives.

(Dean checks again. Disappointment is addictive.)

(And again.)

"So... how much experience do you have?" Dean asks eventually, sound rising up like the sun behind them. They're still in Idaho.

He slumps against the window, right arm nestled in his lap, and stares out at the mountains at their flank. "You know, with the whole diving thing."

"Somewhere below exorcisms and above bow-hunting. We're not exactly in a cert and safety line of work, Dean. In the real world, you gotta be up to code. I promise I am."

Sam had always thought it was hunting where you couldn't be careless, or reckless, or go in half-cocked, half-assed, half-hearted. He and Dean keep proving that more wrong. He should have downed more coffee.

_But you were offered so much stronger._

Sam winces away from the chill that goes up his spine.

"This is the best I can do," he says.

"Then don't do anything."

Maybe if Dean would take a moment and recognize that almost nothing they've done in the last few years is something the world even recognizes as possible, much less permissible, this wouldn't be such a hard sell. And Dean's the one turning himself into a whale in the middle of fucking Montana. He's not even trying to be okay anymore.

He's not even trying to pretend.

"I'm the one who taught you bow-hunting," Dean objects belatedly.

"Yeah, and Dad taught us how to swim by throwing us in a lake until we figured it out. I'm coming with you, Dean."

"Mmhmm," replies Dean. Then he takes something out of his pocket and pops it in his mouth.

"What was that?"

"A refreshing mint."

"What, a pill? Are you in pain?"

Dean's expression is a parody of deep thought, affected especially for Sam. Crowley's expression, he thinks--no, Dean's. Dean's originally.

Dean doesn't say anything, just smacks his lips like he's trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth.

If demon blood did for everyone what it did for Sam, he reasons, demons would have taken over vampire turf years ago. Dean's probably fine. If Sam forgets about the Mark of Cain and everything he knows about his brother, Dean's probably fine. 

Bitterly, Sam hopes Dean knows how it feels to be left to the vortex of wild, meaningless speculation he leaves behind in his wake. And he wonders if Dean's fine with throwing Sam down into that.

Before they hit the Washington border, whatever's kept Dean going this last week extinguishes completely. The kinder, resilient part of Sam finds this a relief. And he takes them down the straight, flat, white fields along the highway, and doesn't have any thoughts but his own. It's quiet.

Fifteen minutes later Dean rouses himself, still pale and shaky and bag-eyed. God, he needed that, he admits, at least. But then he asks, are they almost there?

He never goes back to sleep.

\--

In his pack, Sam has his fins, mask, and a dive light. This side of childhood, they're the only impulsive thing he's ever bought; at the time, that had kind of been the point. He pays for the rest of his rental gear in cash just before they ferry over the border.

Dean won't look at him, and they don't talk about the plan. Sam's not sure if the avoidance means Dean's angry or chastised. But the crossing is smooth--they catch the evening ferry and stay with the car. Crowley's there to meet them, in lieu of passports. If it weren't for the executive treatment and the cowed woodenness of Crowley's border officers, Canada under Crowley didn't seem at all like Hell adjacent. It's gray, quiet, and obedient.

Still, Sam can't shake the claustrophobic tension gathering in his head. Doing anything on Crowley's turf is a major risk, and Sam finds himself mistrustful of everyone on the street, and every congregation huddled under the eaves outside of each chic restaurant. He has to assume everything is two-faced. After all, it had somehow escaped their notice that an entire country was being run by a demon; it hadn't ever occurred to him to check the Canadian papers. Like sending that pishtaco back to Peru, Canada was out of sight and out of mind.

Now that Sam's called himself out on that, it's too easy to feel the city's eyes on them as he navigates the streets down to the marina. And Crowley's, too--it's like he's waiting for Sam to fold.

"My god, what are you so paranoid about?" Dean grumbles. When they docked in Victoria, he'd eaten the last strip of whale, and was apparently disappointed by its effects, or lack thereof. Now he's irritable and anxious. "Do you even know what a kilometer is? At least go speed limit."

Sam pulls into a deserted parking lot, under a pale sign that reads "Sealand of Victoria." It doesn't look like much; just a warehouse on the waterfront. Tall stadium walls block part of the bay from view. It's been empty for so long Dean's phone thinks it doesn't even exist. But all that means is Sam's paranoid for all the right reasons; if anything threatens to go to hell tonight, Sam's going to catch it well in advance. 

Of course, they're a tardy 33 hours out of Kansas. They're already edging towards disaster.

Once inside, Crowley announces, "This is Sealand of Victoria. Or the blubbery carcass of it."

There's a hitch to Dean's breath as they step down into what, at one point, had probably been the performance arena, but he recovers quickly enough to ask, "Nice digs. But what's with you and the whales? Is there something wrong with just sticking to torture?" 

Sam looks out.

It's raining.

The whale pool connects directly with the sea, the enclosure netting long past degraded. Sam's not quite sure why they had to be here, but it's private. If this is where the First Blade is going to have its first showdown this century, that gives them some buffer. 

The clouds sit over the water on the horizon in a way that makes sea and sky almost indistinguishable, especially now that the light's gone down. The higher clouds streak a darker shade of black into the lower cumulus assemblage and the wind whips up. The livewire urgency of exactly how impossible success seems kicks to life in his stomach.

(Sam does not love the sea.)

It's go time.

He and Dean snap to action in silent synchronization. Dean strips down carefully, as though he's not quite sure how to move his body; Sam struggles with his neoprene. By the time Sam has his wetsuit on, Dean's shambling toward the edge of the pool in his T-shirt and boxers.

"What about the rest?" Sam and Crowley ask together, and it leaves a bad taste in Sam's mouth.

"Like hell," Dean barks at Crowley. "The rest is just gonna have to take one for the team. This ain't a peepshow."

"Neither of you are having anywhere near enough sex," says Crowley. His tone is mostly dismissive, but Sam doesn't miss the note of abstracted, uncomfortable pity in there, too. If he and Dean are being pitied by the deposed King of Hell, Sam can't imagine how wrong they've gone in their lives.

Sam feels anxiously sick, in a way he doesn't think he's felt in a long time. The ground hasn't felt solid beneath him months, and he can't help but feel that this is where it swallows him. This is where it swallows them both. "Dean, if there's anything you want to say to me right now--"

"I'll write you a message in a bottle."

It's one more moment when Sam tells himself to say something, to fucking shout it, and he doesn't. And it used to come so easily to him.

Then Dean yelps.

"What? What's wrong?" Sam scrambles for his gear.

"Cold-- The water's cold--!"

"Wait, that's it?"

"F-fuck you, Sam."

But Sam's relief is fleeting. Either Dean collapses or he just wants to get this over with, because he drops boneless onto his stomach, face first. There's no real ceremony to it. Dean just gives himself over to the ocean, with a thirsty intensity that makes Sam wonder what his brother's head's been filled with all this time. The watery black of his T-shirt seems to expand, and Dean slips into the depths and vanishes from sight. It's difficult to see much in the dark, just the ripple of the water, which flashes like cuts of obsidian, the suggestion of someone below the surface. As the chop smoothes out and marches into a gyre, the back of Sam's mind whispers, _The primordial ocean._

The gyre takes up scraps and leafy bycatch, plastics from the wrack zone. It twists and braids and it's water and it's becoming--the spray pelts Sam with a frigid hail, so cold and unexpected it burns. Don't stand too close, or risk being caught in the maelstrom. _Don't step on that fish._

(We all came from the sea.)

Slowly, slowly, the semblance of a whale begins to take shape, breach the water like a gelatinous floating mass. It gains dark substance, a dorsal fin. Sam watches his brother change and his throat collapses in on itself; Sam takes a deep, painful breath. His brother's just a whale; it's no problem. This, after all, has been the plan all along. This is the plan, and it is nothing to worry about. Dean's gonna be in and out; he'll be back with the Blade and come back to normal. If they had a normal. If there's even a baseline to recover.

Dean's floats in the water, immobile. Then he starts to twitch and flail, a great black uncoordinated piñata of motion. Then he sinks.

"Oh, crap."

The logistics of this plan had been sketchy at first, speeding across the country, pre-loading a spell that was apparently still in preliminary testing, but it occurs to Sam now that Dean actually cannot be a whale. And if he can, whales sure as hell don't care about the Blade, or Abaddon. If there is something Sam knows he cannot do, it is save a whale from drowning. 

"Crowley, we need to go help him." 

Crowley throws up his arms. "The dumbest bloody whale--" And then he stops. Sam goes still, trying to sense if Crowley's heard something, but there's nothing but the knocking of boats in the marina and the shudder of rain on the aquarium's old roof. 

"Have a little more faith, Sam," Crowley says anyway. 

Sam resists the urge to tell him to fuck off; Sam's not going to have that lecture, and certainly not from Crowley.

"Well, is he even still in the pool? Could the current push him into the ocean?"

"Oh, for the love of-- He's an orca, not a dinghy."

Suddenly, Dean breaches. Surges, really, right up to the edge of the pool and then against the edge of the pool. The wake that spills over the side of the marina is filled with a confetti of plaster.

"You swim like you drive, Squirrel," Crowley calls, some twenty yards from the pool. 

Sam feels the hand of relief at his shoulders. That's good. That's a good thing. Though "squirrel" isn't anywhere near an accurate nickname, even less so than before, because Dean is enormous. By Sam's estimate, his dorsal fin alone would have been as tall as Sam, if it weren't curved over. Even in the murky storm light Sam can see the wrinkle of scars down Dean's body, like fissures in black tar. Twenty feet maybe. 

Spidering across his right flank is Castiel's handprint, stretched into thin, white, skeletal streaks. It's a mark Sam hasn't seen in a long time, and had almost forgotten. Usually it's a flash as Dean's pulling a T-shirt on; it hasn't been an object of inspection since Alistair, probably, helping Dean out of his hospital gown and back into his civs. A long damn time ago, in any case.

Dean does a barrel roll in the water, his anti-possession tattoo freckled across his white underbelly. And there, like new pink incisions on the underside of Dean's pectoral fin, Sam sees the newest addition to Dean's menagerie of histories and imprints. Large and stretched like that, the Mark looks alive and overeager.

Dean appears to discover neutral buoyancy, and when he does he takes several laps around the pool, at pace if not entirely graceful. He waves at Sam with a fin. Or at least Sam thinks it's a wave; to a whale, he supposes it could mean anything. He tells himself it feels like Dean, though; inasmuch as a whale can feel like Dean.

Sam feels like a sixteen-year old, wondering if his dog really was his best friend ever, or if he was just a fellow stray who also liked apples.

Sam feels like he's thirty, alone and rudderless--trying to listen for Dean's voice, his life, even when he's certain that anything that can kill a Leviathan can obliterate a human.

He feels like yesterday, when he stood in a room with Dean and wasn't sure if Dean was really there or not.

Then Dean's gone. He slaps his fluke on the water's surface and submerges.

Sam gets the wicked impression that Dean's not going to wait.

"Are you planning to make your paycheck just standing there? What are you supposed to be, eye candy?" Crowley asks, when Sam keeps still for too long.

Sam doesn't dignify that with a response. He tries to finish dressing himself. He straps on his BC and runs reassuring mnemonics through his head. He closes his eyes and pushes everything else out of mind. He can't think about Crowley, or Abaddon, or Gadreel, or any of the myriad concerns that have attached themselves to him. Most of all, he cannot think about the limpet mines piling up between him and Dean. They're on the job, and they can't afford to overcomplicate things. 

Sam puts on his face mask, his hood, and his gloves. 

"You know," Crowley starts, and Sam is mostly sure he's about to overcomplicate things. "I've always figured you for a different aesthetic. For obvious reasons--motor oil and dust and the terrestrial wild. Where did this come from?"

Sam's weathered his share of insidious, probing curiosity, and Crowley is a classic case--that is, nothing special. Crowley can be as curious about Kermit, Texas as he wants. It won't get him far.

"Do more research, Crowley."

Sam whispers mnemonics under his breath. Weights, release, air, final okay. 

"This isn't you, Moose."

"Don't tell me who I am." Sam glares witheringly at Crowley from behind his dive mask. Crowley doesn't fucking get to tell him who he is. No one does.

Unchastened, Crowley invites him to revisit the alternative. "I can turn you here and now. Even if you jumped in with that ridiculous get-up right now, there's no way you'd ever find your brother--not as a human. What's one more step?"

Sam sets his jaw. "Everything. 'One more step' is always everything."

"It's just a little step."

"We don't get do-overs, Crowley. There aren't takebacks. I can't believe I'm even having this conversation with you."

With a nostalgic affection Sam associates with other people and their family reunions, Crowley says again, "You are so much like your brother."

Sam regards Crowley with incredulity. "That doesn't sound anything like Dean." 

Dean's the one who does over and over and over. 

"Hold still," says Sam, as he stuffs their evacuated clothing in a duffel and withdraws a can of spray paint.

"Tagging, really? This is a national treasure."

"Wouldn't want you to 'avail yourself of the local attractions' at the wrong moment."

Crowley cocks his head petulantly towards the sky and its rain. "And when something happens to you, what's your brother going to do if he needs my help? Thwack at it with a pectoral?"

"Dean doesn't need your help," Sam insists. But he doesn't finish the sigil.

"Relax, Sam," Crowley says. "Big business is all about making the _right_ concessions. No one has ever gotten anywhere on the back of unimpressive compromises."

"Bite me," says Sam, and puts his regulator into his mouth. There are lengths Sam won't let himself go to--not for Dean, not for anyone--and there are lengths Sam will. He's not going to sell himself short.

Sam takes a giant stride.


	5. Chapter 5

The cold wraps around his neck so tight and fast Sam almost forgets to breathe. Air crackles through his regulator in panicked bursts, however, and he uses the noise to focus on the task at hand: Don't die.

Scuba diving is not one of the hardest things Sam's tried his hand at; it's reassuringly rule-governed, in a way that Sam's always been good at tuning to autopilot. But it's been a while, and it's cold as hell, and Sam's pretty sure most dives don't involve ocean origin mythos or dubiously mannered killer whales. 

He concentrates on controlling his descent; neutral buoyancy was a bitch. He lets a bit of air out of his BC. Sam's ears twinge under the extra pressure, and he works his jaw to relieve the pain. One step at a time.

The bay sits on a shelf that drops off sharply somewhat past Sealand's enclosure, and as Sam kicks farther away from shore, the temperature hits a new level of discomfort. Even with his dive light, the water is a reflective milky white, and globular masses hang from the eelgrass writhing below him. If he has any chance of catching up with Dean, he's going to have to listen for him. Dean might be as long as a house, but he'd have to be decked out like a ferris wheel for Sam to spot him out here.

It's unsettlingly noisy in the bay, given how blind Sam is. He proceeds with the expectation that with each kick, he'll find himself face to face with something faster and toothier than he is, and tries not to ruminate too vividly on the popping and crunching and clicking that pulses from indeterminate arenas above and around him. 

The impressions Gadreel has left inside him curl into the teasing current like it's some kind of homecoming. Sam resists it at first, and then, tentatively, lets it guide him. If any angel has business in the sea, it's a fair bet that business intersects with Sam's own. Just historically speaking. 

And so, at the periphery of his vision, where his mask cuts off his view of the murk, Gadreel's memories dance bright and molten. It's something bright. There's a reflexive quickening in his stomach, which Sam takes to mean that whatever it is, it's close--just not close enough. He flutter kicks with greater abandon. Dean or no Dean, Sam's only got so much air. He might as well spend it doing something.

Then Sam feels a tickling at his ankle. He draws his feet in and shines his light downward. 

Sea lions--a group of them. It seems a little late for sea lions, Sam thinks. But they're booking it back the way Sam came, which sends him tumbling. Maybe they'd been distracted by something. Given the way the one below him keeps butting at his feet, Sam figures these particular ones weren't exactly MENSA material. Even cows weren't this dumb.

The sea lion examines Sam, nipping lightly at his body. When they come face to face with each other, its whiskers cast sharp shadows across its snout, arching up and away from the beam of Sam's dive light. Its face reminds Sam of the one selkie he'd ever hunted. (Dean hadn't been there then, either. Summer, the Gulf of Maine, 2008.)

Sam turns away from his new friend and back out to sea. If it ended five feet from him, he wouldn't know; it's all just murky white. He's not sure if this makes it feel vast or prison-like. But it's a mistake to ever believe you're alone in the ocean. 

There's a screech and the sudden, terrible warmth of blood just below Sam's feet, where his sea lion had still been lurking. The sea lion spirals up past him and with a sick lurch Sam realizes he's probably in big fucking trouble.

Before he can kick away, Sam sees a black head and an enormous set of conical teeth rising up out of the deep like a luminous mirage. As the thing charges past him, milky belly to his face, he realizes it's Dean. 

He should be glad it's Dean. But Dean's going after that sea lion like his life depends on it--a hunt elementally, primally important--and Sam can't tell if Dean means to be protective, hungry, or bored and experimental. And this, this is what he was afraid of. 

When Dean loses, or tires, of his seal he slinks back around Sam. The proximity registers as familiar, and Sam relaxes slightly. He extends a tentative glove toward Dean's head. 

Dean dips lower and lets Sam trail his hand all the way down Dean's side. He's rubbery and smooth, a sensation only broken by the crevasse of Castiel's handprint on him. This won't be so bad.

Then Sam feels a tug on his foot, and he's rushing downward through the water. It all happens morbidly quick.

Sam's ears pop, and Dean just drags him deeper. He's not gentle, they're not headed toward anything. It's all Sam can do to remember to breathe; his impulse, his very strong impulse as he gets sucked deeper, is to stop and conserve his air. But that will kill him more surely than Dean will.

Dean's going to kill him, Sam realizes.

He fights it. He can fight it. He manages to ditch the flipper and stall his descent, but too quickly Sam feels the hard smack of Dean's weight against his chest, barreling him backward.

And then Dean's gone. There's a pulse through the water when he dives deeper and away, and then nothing. Dean's just gone.

It's all so sharp and quick. 

The ocean is white and empty again when Sam's vision shimmers back, away from its black and its pinpricks of red, blue and yellow. He's alone.

Sam hangs in the water, sucking in shallow, frenetic breaths--the best he can do to keep his ribs from screaming. Suspended, thoughtless, he ascertains that if he's mindful he can move without unbearable consequence. Next, he tries to steady his breathing.

His first thought is that he's not gonna alter course. If anything, it only proves how critical Sam's presence is, because Dean can't do this alone. He's not in control; he's not Dean. Dean would never hurt him.

Sam frowns.

He's never going to catch up with Dean now, especially not if he doesn't want to be found. And Gadreel's memories are dimming, too, overpowered by Sam's own fireworks--in his chest, his heart. If he were alone, Sam would keep going. But he and Dean both need to come out on the other end of this; Sam's gonna make sure of that.

If Dean comes back with the Blade, great. No Blade, and Sam's going to need to have a Plan B before Abaddon catches up with them. Regardless, what he needs most right now is more information, and Crowley has no excuse now to keep from ponying up. Until Dean gets back, it's not like time is of the essence.

Sam doubles back. He tells himself this is the smartest plan they've had all day, but it still feels pitifully half-assed.

Sam tries not to think about defeat. Whole failure. One way or another, Dean will come back.

He'll swim back.

As Sam kicks upward, time decompresses and protracts. The ascent is long and too well-suited to reflection. He wills himself to imagine nothing. To keep his mind blank. He can crash when he reaches the surface. He concentrates on skirting the pain.

At fifteen feet, Sam forces himself to stop, let his body catch up with the pressure shift like he'd been taught. His tears from that first shock of pain have steamed up his mask, but he doesn't bother to make any adjustments. He can't see for shit down here anyway. 

When he closes his eyes, he swears he can feel Dean coming for him again.

\--

Sam's graceless return to Sealand confirms his cracked rib theory several times over. Once out of the water, all Sam can really feel is cold and pain, and each seem to augment the other. Every shambling, block-like move he makes excites his ribs in aggressively vocal ways. The pain is more apparent without the even calm of the water pressure, and when he shakes the rain of his eyelashes even that minor torsion makes them wail.

"You look successful," Crowley notes dryly, without looking up from his phone.

"I don't-- I don't think he recognized me--" Sam chatters by way of explanation. He feels like he's going to be sick. Then he takes a deep, accidental breath and assures himself that under no circumstances is he going to allow himself to be sick. He unleashes a string of expletives.

"He _didn't_ recognize me--"

Crowley doesn't seem all that surprised. "Right, well. Do recall we're searching for the First Blade. Perhaps you should get used to that."

\--

Sam nearly condescends to kicking the duffel bag all the way back to the car, but he grits his way through the pain of heaving it onto his shoulder and, after ordering Crowley onto whale sentry duty, limps toward the parking lot.

He thinks of everything but dismal failure.

Once he's changed (in a clammy, sandy, haphazard sense), he dumps his scuba equipment onto a slightly musty shroud and buries it all at the back of the trunk.

Numbly, he thinks of everything but failure.

Mostly, he thinks, he's cold.

He climbs into the passenger side of the Impala and runs the heater. The vents blasts icy air at him. 

He will not think of failure.

Sam misses the close, windbreaking fit of his wetsuit, and he wishes more than anything that he and Dean were at some skeevy motel, running out all the hot water in the complex; that Dean were here and hell, that they were hunting selkies, instead of whatever they were calling their present bullshit. He hugs his jacket closer to his body and tries to rub out the goosebumps crawling across his arms and shoulders.

His hair is dripping all down his back, but when he leans forward his ribs read him the riot act. He tries not to sneeze.

"Fuck, Dean," he hisses, when he tries to take a normal breath. Fucking... _whale._

When he closes his eyes, there are double rows of teeth blinking back at him. And behind them, Dean--or the absence of him. Sam's not sure if these things are all that different anymore.

Gadreel's leftovers seem like lullabies, comparatively.

But when the pain recedes, Sam resolves to keep himself warm and busy. He stares dumbly at the dashboard for a moment, leaden and shocky. Then he picks a chore.

He spreads Dean's rain-soaked jacket across the steering wheel in the hopes that it might dry off some. It hangs heavy, so Sam takes it back and rummages through the pockets, and he doesn't think about failure. 

Inner-right, Dad's journal. A collection of lint-encrusted paper clips which Sam can't decide were purposive or just fallen out of the journal, no longer marking places that no longer need to be marked. Knives in abundance. In the right-hand pocket, Dean's gun--obviously a new transfer, from waistband to pocket. Some receipts, now sodden; and tinged green by several grainy, half-dissolved pills. Sam recognizes them. And he's angry at them. And he's probably angry at Dean, too, but he's a little tapped out on surprise and betrayal at the moment. Dean can do whatever the hell he wants.

Sam wipes the lint and amphetamine grime off of Dean's phone. It's a little wet, but after a couple attempts the screen recognizes Sam's numb fingers and he swipes himself in. The newest messages are a stream of staccato one-word texts to Cas--variations on 'hey,' 'Cas,' and '4-10.' 

Dean's inbox is empty, but if Sam weren't Sam, he probably wouldn't have responded, either; there just wasn't any information to respond to. And if Dean really wanted to get Cas's attention, surely there were more evocative ways of describing their situation. Maybe ones that involved the words "Crowley," "First Blade," or "whales," for instance. Sam rolls his eyes and keeps scrolling.

The timestamps spin backwards--they happen in clusters, gas station increments. A flurry in this morning's early AM, all before Sam's run. (All before Sam ran.) There are unanswered batches stretching days back, punctuated only by Dean's calls to Sam--Stillwater, and before that, Wisconsin. 'Yo,' they read. 

'hey CAss.'

'got yourea ears on.'

'Cas.'

They're all so substanceless, undescriptive, un-urgent. 

Except for the part where there are hundreds of them. 

It makes Sam feel sick, like he's walked in on a stranger's private business. But that's not it, since they've made something careerish out of exactly that. He feels like he's walked in on his brother, naked. His skin is marked with meaningless scar after scar after sigil, but taken at volume they all mean _please help me_.

Sam thinks about everything but failure.

He thinks about everything but failure, and Dean's teeth. Dean's weight thrown against him and Dean's monstrosity and Dean's absence.

And you know what, fuck it. Sam swipes into Dean's phone again and starts a new message to Cas. But after a moment, all he does is punch in '4-10' and send. It's exhausting to think about having to put all this into a genre with a character limit. There's just no way. Instead, he pulls up a web browser and fiddles his way onto the security settings of Castiel's phone, turns on the GPS.

The browser spools, and finally the Impala's heat kicks in in earnest--warm relief. 

Cas is in Van Nuys, California. That would have been nice to know.

Sam is altogether too familiar with Van Nuys, and what an angel might want with it. He remembers that warehouse, and Heaven adjacent or whatever pocket of universe the room inside was supposed to be; when you strike a deal with Heaven, you do it in Van Nuys. And Sam remembers with a vivid, searing panic what it had felt like when Michael bore down on them in that room, all wind and shattered glass and electrical short. The unrelenting peal of angels screaming. The look in Dean's eyes when they found Sam--pure apology.

But he'd turned that around, Sam amends quickly. Dean had turned that around. Maybe Cas is planning a deception, too. Maybe he's a prisoner. Maybe it's nothing at all, and Cas is in Los Angeles on another fruitless search, like so many leads they've run to their end and ground to nothing. It could be any number of things. 

So he does not ask, _Cas, what the hell are you doing in Van Nuys._

But now that he's thought it, he can't shake it--that look in Dean's eyes, just before Michael would have snapped him up; his teeth, just before he threw him down. If Sam thought he'd lost his brother in Van Nuys, he's not sure what they're living through now. 

Under no circumstances should he be trusting Dean. It's downright stupid, at this point, to be trusting Dean. Whale or no whale, if the last thirty hours have told him anything, there's a thick, unyielding silence between them. Sam knows what Dean's willing to compromise to get what he wants, but that's about it; what Dean knows about Sam is even less. Yet Sam still can't to bring himself to ask, _Dean, what are you doing? What the fuck do you think you're doing?_

So here they are--or aren't.

They've been on the run from--or on the run toward; accounts differ--Abaddon all this time, but Sam feels like his brother's the one making waves. They're sticking their necks into the campaign for Hell and the worst part of it is having to share space with each other. And Sam is losing him.

When Sam thinks about that, he forgets to be angry. He forgets to hold his ground, and consult reason, and remember the big picture and its complex systems, its fractal interrelations, and all of that bullshit. All Sam can think about is his brother; his whole world funnels down to DeanDeanDean. It's a panic mode, an arresting state of total emergency. It's these moments when Sam probably understands Dean best. This is where Dean lives.

Sam feels like the only way to get away from that is to trust Dean. If the situation were reversed, to use their tell-all phrase, it's what Sam would want. The way this plays out, though, Sam's still trusting Dean like he's the same person he was a long time ago. Except there's a big difference between trusting someone to keep you safe, and telling yourself you trust someone because they're safe, they're fine, and you haven't let them down. When they needed you, you kept them from falling apart. You trust them because they trust you.

And then Sam's just angry again, because it's not his fault. Dean is not his fault. All the shit Dean's pulled with him is not his fault. (But shouldn't someone fix it? Shouldn't someone have fixed this? Shouldn't Sam be able to fix this?)

The cycle repeats.

So Sam steps over the rows of teeth in his head and tries to find somewhere else to run. The closest he gets to peace of mind is the illusion of it. He floats in Gadreel's sea and instead of picking up and moving on, Sam stays a while. Even if he can't see it for himself, Sam needs to know the sea. He needs to know what's out there.

The tides are strong, but down deep the current batters less. _We all come from the deep._

There is something bright down there, mirror-surfaced. But if it's reflecting any light, it has to be coming from the other side.

A window, then. A gateway. Gadreel yearns.

But all of this feels like too much of an exoneration. Like if there's an upside to Gadreel's flotsam, then it must have been okay. Who needs the Queen of Hell to want you dead when you have 'okay.'

It'll do the job just fine.

Sam wheel-spins. Then he backtracks. And he disappears. Eventually, he's warm and asleep.

He dreams about Kevin. He dreams about Dean's teeth--two rows, predatory. Dean's mouth opening and the First Blade displaying on his tongue, like a dragon with a sword. He dreams about rain. He dreams about inland deserts, bright Heavenly light. Sam dreams about Amelia. The tick of a movie theater's massive screen. He dreams of rain, and of Dean's hands cupping just below his jaw, telling Sam to look at him, look at him, Sam. The angels are falling. He dreams of Dean's touch, and the touch, again, of rain. A sensate slippage. He dreams of a flood of light, not death, or a guide to elsewhere, but of an angel come to stay.

He wakes wheezing and sweating to the blip of Dean's phone, whining about low battery. 

It's just past midnight, and Sam is still alone in the Impala. It's stuffy, and he's gone from frozen to overheated. So he takes back the keys and he throws Dean's phone on the dashboard, and struggles to get out of the car as painlessly as possible. If Cas wants to drop a line, he's too late.

Sam heads back to Sealand, and waits for Dean to come home.

\--

As a base camp, Sealand's not great. Privacy really is its only selling point.

Otherwise, the arena is open in too many directions, and Sam can see the gloomy contours of ground level through the gaps in the bleachers. He hates it when the floor's not secure; it makes devil's traps a bitch. And the ambient noise is a thick, almost impenetrable chorus of rain plinking off the aluminum bleachers--still shiny and minus a few dents, unperturbed by the passage of time, the squalor of disuse--and the glug of the bay against, well, everything.

But at least it's as deserted as Crowley said. The electricity's all been powered down. There are no cameras. Most of the doors are locked tight. Though really, that's not a helpful security measure. Locked doors are a hindrance for Sam and a total non-object for anything that might want to come kill them. Sam completes his survey and turns to Crowley, who shrugs demurely, as though he's trying to deny his silent appraisal of Sam's actions.

 _Nothing to see here, Moose._

Whatever. Crowley wants to read paranoia into information-gathering, fine. That's his prerogative. But if there's going to be some kind of showdown--if they even make it that far--he might as well be ready. He feels like he's giving Sealand a janitorial sort of attention, anticipating more clean-up than show, but he might as well be ready.

Sam limps through the arena with flatline detachment. This isn't paranoia. He can feel the panic in him still, but he doesn't have the energy to exercise it. He doesn't have the will to throw himself back into fight mode. He stares out at the dark sea, vista twinkling with blinking buoys and night ships, all the rest checkered into sharp, geometrical cuts and fine gradations of black and purple, so unlike the ocean.

Eventually, he sets up shop in the bleachers. There's an overhang that blocks most of the rain, though it doesn't stop the wind from sending in a horizontal spray. Sam drops his backpack under the bleacher, until he sees that there's an observation grotto down below--more of a crawlspace, really, for kids--with a view of the enclosure. It's difficult to see anything, but Sam can just make out shades of blue in the black of the bay water and the sifting of silt and plaster and ocean flotsam, wavering on the other side of the glass like ghosts. It's not as pretty as the horizon. Forget Gadreel, and Cain, and Dean: He doesn't love the sea.

Once the sun rises, Sam should be able to see Dean coming from way out.

Sam's not sure how long he'll have to wait. Overnight? Days? Eternity? He hasn't yet let himself plan out what he'll do if Dean never shows; that would acquire suggesting, even theoretically, that Dean is really gone.

He remembers waiting for Dad like this, huddled on some stranger's stoop, or at the motel curb. He'd outgrown waiting far quicker than Dean had, but he still remembers. He remembers sharing one of Dad's left jackets and huddling together for maximum warmth, shoving four hands into one pocket--waiting like that until their calves cramped and their bums froze.

"I did try, you know--to tempt an actual whale." Like an apparition, Crowley's availed himself of the bleacher to Sam's right. "You should be aware that this was no one's Plan A."

Reflexively, Sam scoots to his left, and swears when he jostles his ribs. This was going to be fun.

When he does not receive a more eloquent response, Crowley continues, "It just happens that you and your brother are like the universe's Swiss Army Knife. If you can't find a whale who will listen, make one."

"You're an idiot." But he lets Crowley keep talking. He has information to glean.

"Eve spoke to a snake. You've always known who I am." 

"What do you want with my brother?"

Crowley clicks his tongue. "Shockingly little. Or perhaps less shocking--I wouldn't hinge my conquests on a bloodline. It's bad business. I play the penny stocks. Patterns, tessellations, startup after startup after startup, ad nauseam."

Sam considers this. Crowley hadn't wanted the Apocalypse, after all; he'd wanted the planet. He hadn't wanted Alphas, per se--just their castles. And not God's power, but his Purgatory. His is a land grab; and if Crowley'd been around when the continents rose up out of the seas, he wouldn't have left them to the whims of plate tectonics. They'd have been piled up like poker chips.

"Abaddon's a Futurist, and your friend Metatron is embarrassingly Po-Mo. I need your brother to remind them what a story's really meant to be."

"That's flattering."

"You're invited."

Except Crowley's never really struck Sam as all that traditional. Sam has seen his Hell, and to be honest, it hadn't been particularly imaginative. It didn't have the grandiosity of an Old Testament expanse, and seems to have been built on irony more than anything. What story was he trying to write? The eBible?

Sam pries. "And your story has a counterspell? That sounds anticlimactic."

"More of a suggestion, really. A blood spell."

"That's a pretty heavy suggestion."

"Well, I did model it off you. Fewer needles, though--I'm not a veterinarian." Crowley withdraws the scotch flask from Idaho instead of a syringe, and gestures toward Sam's body.

No trap--if Crowley wants to screw Sam over, he probably already has. Sam takes out a knife.

"A few waterings, metabolic biochemistry takes its course, and your brother's good as new. Like a human Chia Pet," Crowley assures him. "The real cetaceans, on the other hand, are all a-flutter; the waters are warming. They'll need a savior, too."

"Yeah, the waters are warming," Sam agrees noncommittally. He hands back the flask, his blood slicking the bottom of it.

"It means Hell's starting to boil over without its... _despotic moderator_. At which point you may need to do considerably more than seal the source."

"It's called global warming. Hell can't take credit for that."

"Honestly, Sam. How do you still believe your media up here? After all this? 'Freak meteor shower,' really?"

"It's global warming," Sam insists. He's not going to argue about this. 

He tests Crowley again. "How'd you figure Victoria for the Blade? You wouldn't bring Abaddon down on yourself if the odds weren't good enough."

"Well, they wouldn't have named it for the Queen if it weren't already important, would they?"

Sam glowers at him. 

Crowley gifts him with a deep, rib-heaving sigh. He swishes Sam's blood in his flask. "Do you flick a spinner every time you pick a means of monster-hunting? Demons have been at their work far longer than you boys; we know things. Cain was First. He's in all our blood." 

"I thought Lilith was supposed to be the first. Not Cain."

"Lilith? Lilith was the first to be tempted. Cain was the first to concede."

Sam turns to face Crowley. That's a finer distinction than Sam has come to expect from Hell. But maybe it's all in the attitude: It's the difference between trading up and giving in.

"Your brother's made his choice. What about you?"

"There's no kingdom, Crowley. There are no kings. Don't romanticize this."

"The two of you are always so subtle, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I have an inkling that perhaps there's been some trouble in paradise? If you want control, Sam, that's nothing a crown wouldn't solve."

"Spare me the melodrama."

Crowley shrugs. "Imagine how easy your whole life would have been, with you and your brother seeing eye to eye on everything. Imagine how easy all the rest of this might be."

"Easy," Sam agrees. "Brief. Painful, and bloody."

"Right, because this version is so stable and delightful."

Sam's head snaps up. He hears Dean well before he sees him. And he remembers to descend the bleachers as sedately as possible, but it's too soon. 

They have no timeframe, and certainly no way to approximate one, but this is too soon.

Something happened.

Sam rushes to the water's edge in a shambling jog, his thoughts somewhere beyond pain; he knows that whale song is supposed to be one of those languorous, soothing soundtracks that people love so much, but Dean's song isn't beautiful.

Dean whistles and pulses, frequencies tearing apart from one another in a splitting cacophony.

To Sam, it just sounds like screaming. 

A dorsal fin leads up out of black water--Dean's dorsal fin, Sam amends--and Sam catches sight of Dean's smooth back amidst the chop he's stirring up. Then he's under again, and back up, and the water churns with his frenetic assault on the bay. (It just sounds like screaming, it sounds so much like screaming--) Dean tailspins like a missile, sideswiping the dock with his full body. Sam hears a crack.

"Dean--!" he tries, but he knows that's worthless. Even if Dean could hear him, who knows if it would matter. Instead, Dean thrashes in the water, twisting and rolling like the very best of the possessed.

And Sam can't handle it. He can't handle the screaming. "Turn him back," he demands, over the screaming and over the flush of water over the dock. When Crowley doesn't move, Sam shouts, "Crowley, get the fuck out there and turn him back!"

Crowley keeps a few feet behind Sam, and Sam can feel his assessing gaze at his back again. "Well, I imagine you don't want a rush job."

Dean whistles, and chirps, and screams. 

He'd been so silent before. 

Whatever comes next, they'll deal with it. After Dean isn't twelve tons of whale, they'll deal with it. Sam just needs his brother back; he'll deal with whatever's left when that time comes. 

"I've heard dungeon stints do wonders for overambitious--in this case, hyperactive--monsters."

Dean scrapes along the side of the enclosure, a storm of plaster swirling caseous in his wake. He won't stop screaming.

"Crowley, turn him _now!_ "


	6. Chapter 6

There's not much to see in the ocean--not when it's night, and dark, and deep. 

But there's plenty to hear. There's knocking and clicking and rumbling and screaming and it echoes through passages and melon chambers in Dean's head and the world fans out before him in a soundscape. He can hear speed, and spines, and he can hear the memory of color and of course, music. Thwaking boats above him, the peal of tiny, austere bells below. He can't see a thing, but he feels the space around him in his jaw and up to his brain, and it's clearer than anything he's ever known on earth before. There's nothing to see, so Dean feels everything. If it weren't so cold, if it weren't so his, it would remind him a lot of Hell. But maybe this is just what it feels like to be at the top of the food chain.

Below him he hears screaming. The sound of bright pain and dark fury. The screaming forms and archway and it beckons, the sound reaches out for him--with such strength Dean turns toward it, against the current, and plunges toward its depths. He's full of water and then, suddenly, he's full of sound, and then panic. And what does he do? 

He fucking runs.

The ocean pitches vertically, and then Dean's hands are under the tap, and he's splashing water onto his face. 

It's artificial-bright, there are walls on all sides of him, he is human. Right, it's a bathroom. He's in Sam's jacket and not a whole lot else. They're at--whoa, marble countertops. 

They're at some kind of ritzy hotel. 

The sea is probably miles away.

Dean's not entirely sure how they got here.

His hands are covered in blood and mucus, and there's black under his fingernails. He scrubs until his knuckles are pink and raw, and then gives up. He looks at himself in the mirror; he'd need a three-day shower to come clean from this one. And he's had enough of water. 

He feels...not right. He wipes a hand across his stomach and nearly gasps at its tenderness; everything from his ribs down feels misshapen, disorganized. His abdomen is ridged and herniated, and the realization makes him feel overheated and dizzy. His back is fucking killing him.

And he doesn't know what to do.

He hadn't planned this far ahead. He's not sure what he'd expected to find in the ocean--and still isn't sure what he did. It's all a froth in his head, an unbearable wall of sound he cannot penetrate. But whatever it was, he knows he ran from it. 

Which fucking figures, because it's a little late for cold feet now. 

There's an aching in his jaw and screaming in his head, but there's no blade, and there's no end, and he figured he'd find one or the other--and neither of them involved coming back. But here he is--for now, at least. 

He puts a hand to his back and tries not to hyperventilate. Then he pitches forward. He concentrates on the rush of the tap down the sink and back, back all the way to the ocean.

Not good. Not good at all.

His arms shake as he props himself up over one of the double sinks. He should be puking in the toilet but that would require getting much lower than he's willing to manage right now. Wincing, he takes off Sam's jacket arm by arm. The mark is still an angry red, spider veins running away from it and down his arm. There's a darker network spilling out deeper under the skin, and these trace down to his wrist. But it doesn't... it doesn't push him, or call out to him--not like the things in the sea, or the ringing in his own head. It seems more like evidence than actor.

Dean wonders what that says about him.

Passive or not, the Mark isn't above splintering his arm with a gnawing (marrow-sipping) pain. He tries to lean low enough to at least get it under some cold water, for all the good that won't do. 

His fingers feel like overfilled sausages, but he paws at the crumple of clothing on the counter and manages to pull on a T-shirt (also Sam's); his own flannel; and his own jacket, still damp, its pockets emptied. The jeans are a harder sell. Something low in his back protests vocally as he steps into them and tries to get close enough to the floor to pull them up. He feels just as likely to topple over.

Then there's a pressure behind him. A thing standing too close. Dean's awareness spikes and he feels a laciniate shudder down his spine as every muscle primes and tenses.

"Bend from the hips," says Crowley.

Dean does his best to fuck instinct and fail to react. He won't give Crowley that satisfaction. "I'm a little busy," he rasps.

But Crowley shuffles Sam's jacket off to the side with a sweep of his foot and settles in. He peeks in the mirror over Dean's shoulder. 

Dean feels like the only real way to describe Crowley in that moment is way too fucking close. "Touch me, and I kill you."

"But would you really? You put your cells in my hands, Dean. I'm the only one who knows what I did to them." 

"You can't fix any of this." If he could, Sam would have seen that he did. "You don't get points for being redundant." 

"What is it with you two and negating my obvious necessity? Does it make you uncomfortable?" asks Crowley. "Who do you think pulled your mucky ass out of the water and dragged you up here? Any of this ringing a bell?"

Sam, he'd assumed. Sam had. But apparently he was wrong.

If Crowley reads the confusion on his face, he doesn't comment. He nods toward the faucet, which is still running. "Perhaps you should drink some of that water rather than beautify in it. Your significantly less large, less impressive human kidneys aren't quite caught up with your diet of salt and salt water."

Dean doesn't want to hear this sick bay crap, and definitely not from Crowley. If it's gonna be anyone, it should be Sam. Sam should be here with him; Dean should be falling apart, and trying not to fall apart, and doing that whole dog and pony show, and zipping up his fucking fly with Sam, not Crowley. Or not Sam; maybe Sam's not a 'should' anymore, just a wish. They've hit the end of the road, and all of that is nothing more than a wish.

"Semi-human kidneys," Crowley clarifies, because Dean hasn't moved. "As one might imagine, your body is a mite panicked at the mo'. Just remember--Moose is the one who rushed the spell."

"Keep Sam out of this." _It should not be you._

"Seriously? Now you're hardline about being a lone wolf? I saw how well that worked for you last time. Drinking, brawling, dubious tattoos--"

"Crowley," Dean says. And Dean turns on him, quicker than Crowley clearly would have given him credit for. But it's not so hard if Dean shuts himself down. If he lets go of a day from now, or ten minutes from now, and Sam, and his body, whatever the fuck is happening to his body. If he lets go of pain--cautionary red flag that it is--and just listens to the ocean beat against him, flow through him as he sucks it down. Hell, forget the finish line. Forget Abaddon, and Metatron, and possibly most of all Gadreel. Forget Cas, wherever he is; forget Sam, and that look he gives Dean without even realizing. Forget self-pity and hurt and fear and hatred, and all the rest of his bullshit. Let the ocean fill the vacuum. All that matters is what's right fucking in front of him, the surge it kicks through his body. And Crowley needs to go. 

He grabs Crowley by the tie and slams his back against the edge of the marble sink. Then Dean pulls him in close, and makes sure Crowley meets his fucking eyes. 

Crowley's gaze travels all the way down Dean's arm before Dean slams him back against the sink again with an audible crunch. "As far as you're concerned, I'm doin' just fine. Blade or no blade, fucking try me."

"So I see," Crowley says carefully. He adjusts both his suit and his spine and rolls out a crick in his neck. "I'll be waiting in the cafe, then. Oh, and just because we're besties, tell Sam I've ordered him up some room service. I assume _you're_ not hungry."

Then Crowley vanishes with a crack. Dean feels the pulse of the sound in his bones.

Dean's fine. But, threat dispatched, he backs up against the wall. 

He braces his hands against his knees as he concentrates on breathing. It's one of those things that's been some kind of Herculean task altogether too many times this weekend. He lets himself sink all the way to the ground. 

The tile beneath him is cool and hard. 

If he thought yesterday was shit, it's a wonder what twenty-four hours can do.

He's not even sure if this is or is not what he'd hoped. All of his expectations had, in a general sense, been accurate; but bracing yourself for a downward spiral was sort of like planning for water to be wet. 

He'd hoped for a miracle. He'd hoped for oblivion. He'd hoped that Cas would show, that he and Sam would find their stride again. That'd he'd wake up one morning forgiven, that he'd know how to apologize in a way that mattered to him and Sam both, that he'd learn how to fucking let go of shit and that Sam would too. But more realistically he'd hoped that everything would throw itself to the fire. That they would break in ways that begged no further scrutiny, that left no doubts and no wishes as to where the next step led. If he's gonna sink, then let him sink. He just wants to drown quickly.

Because maybe it's called tenacity, or resilience, or something. In some circles, maybe it's even bravery, this fucking commitment to hanging on to the belief that he and Sam, they're gonna be okay. Maybe it's supposed to be heroism, this never giving up on family--or never giving up on the world-saving thing, or the vengeance thing, or whatever it is they're supposed to be in the middle of right now. But Dean can see it for what it really is, and it's drag. Bottom-trawling. And there's nothing brave or heroic about being stuck like this. 

He needs help.

He passes a tentative hand over his middle, which is lumpy and tender and hot. It's probably the least of his problems, his body, but it's still a bad move. His stomach lurches, he feels a tightness in his chest and heat on his cheeks and whatever in the name of god was in his stomach comes up for inspection. From the taste (and whose palate is this, exactly?), Dean blearily guesses porpoise. Fuck. 

He wipes the worst of it from his front and swipes his sleeve over his chin. What a fucking mess. He should really stop putting things in his mouth. This is completely fucking pathetic.

And he really, really needs help.

But he just--

He's on his hands and knees trying to get back on his feet. 

The bathroom opens out into a vast penthouse space, with the kind of furniture that makes you realize how shit normal furniture is. Everything has an executive gleam to it, exorbitant jewel tones with glimmering industrial flourishes, and Dean knows exactly who must have set them up here. He doesn't want to think about what must have happened that Crowley got to be their travel agent _and_ Dean's nursemaid, but the west wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, with a panoramic view of the black ocean and the constellations of light that form the city below, and he almost doesn't have to. There's the rush of the sea in his bones and a vibrating in his jaw, a tingling in his arms, and he almost doesn't have to come back to anything else.

Sam's folded himself into a defensible corner by the wetbar, away from the great window and the openness of the rest of their space. He's on the phone, and for a moment Dean thinks maybe he's finally gotten ahold of Cas. But "Bungalow Jim's" hold music is so loud even Dean can hear the repetitive jingle. The lyrics are "bungalow," "Jim," and "Canadian"--which seems like a stretch, rhyme-wise. 

Sam just wants a new motel.

When Sam catches sight of him, he appraises Dean silently, as though he's not sure who or what he might be looking at. Dean doesn't give him any clues, which is probably identification enough. Instead he weaves his way through their bulging suede sofa set and drops onto the edge of the coffee table. It's glass etched with corals and seagrass.

He's asked Sam for too much already.

Because Dean appraises Sam, too. Sam scans the room constantly; and sometimes his focus alights on Dean, and sometimes it doesn't, but he never falls away from red alert. Maybe orange. But Sam hates the room and he hates the window; and it's not just the insinuation of Crowley in all the furnishings (though that doesn't help; if Crowley owns Canada, clearly he owns this penthouse, too. And it's probably not Crowley's gold-hearted goodness that's gifted them with any of the above). 

This is exactly the kind of room that they don't touch, in the same sense that Crowley's not someone they work with and Dean's not something Sam should have to worry about. That is, Sam's freaked. He's uncomfortable in his own skin, and his own room, and all of these massive spaces that should be his alone to rule.

And for some reason, 'hey Sammy, what's going on with you? are you all right?' has been redacted from Dean's vocabulary.

Instead he sits, and he aches, and he half-memorizes the lyrics to Bungalow Jim / Canadian / he's an honest fellow / if you think the prices in Hell are low / you must be a comedian / and then something about beating him violently. But maybe Dean's making that up. 

He runs a hand through his tacky hair and lets it rest at his nape. His back--or his kidneys, Dean supposes--throb.

Sam's domino number one. If Dean addresses one thing, there's no way they're getting away without having the whole fabric of everything come down on them--and these are the kind of dominoes that spill both ways. It'll probably kill them both if they're not ready, and maybe even if they are. Of course, Dean's not sure if he doesn't want that. It'd be easier.

"Hang up the phone," Dean says wearily. But even tired has an edge, and Sam's attention snaps away from the front door and back to Dean. He continues, "Bungalow Jimmy clearly ain't picking up for you. If you don't like this room, sorry pal. Get over it. Shitty penthouse, differently shitty bungalow--it doesn't matter."

Sam looks shocked, and then hurt, and then he doesn't care. "What, you want every odd stacked against us? That's your big plan?"

"Hang up the phone."

Dean is tired of trying to make the right choices. He's so far down this road there aren't any left. And all this waffling, the second-guessing and the hoping and the dumb fucking hanging on to Sam, is just screwing everything up more. No matter what he does, it's like climbing a mountain in a landslide he set off. And he is so tired of walking away from what feels good. (Well, "good." Dean has low standards.)

But the Bungalow Jim song cuts out and there's the tromp of Sam's boots across marble, and Sam's voice somewhere in front of him. Which doesn't really feel good at all but fuck, Dean wants it. He wants Sam.

Sam wants specifics. "What's wrong?" he asks, the way Dean fucking hadn't. Of course, he probably could have phrased it better. At this point, what wasn't wrong?

Up close, Sam looks clammy and ashen. His hair's full of sea gunk, and when he sits down in the vast chair across from Dean, he lets out a sharp yip when he sinks in too deep. He's as much a rollercoaster of masks as Dean is, and they keep missing each other. But at least Sam has a hand out. It's wrapped with a haphazard scrap bandage; Dean's pretty sure he recognizes the shirt it came from.

"And what--" Sam starts.

"It's not mine," Dean says, pushing Sam's hand away from his shirt, which is crusty now with salt and animal blood. "I ate a porpoise. And then I threw it up."

"Oh, if _that's_ all," says Sam. 

Sam takes a deep, shuddering breath, and the energy in the room kicks down a notch. They're back to a tired, low-grade panic, empty of bravado. "Seriously, man."

Sam's holding himself so tenderly, and he's so, so done. (And whose fault is that.) 

He does not need to hear that Dean's a fucking mess; that's been obvious since god knows when, and Sam has his own hurt to nurse. He doesn't need someone to tell him how bad it is, whatever they're deep into (and only halfway though)--it's bad. He just needs to know what their timeframe is, how much time and juice they have to work with. 

Dean fixes himself on Sam with something like intensity--intensity, if it were scribbled in the dark.

"We're going to need to track down Abaddon sooner rather than later," he says. 

Sam is quiet.

"Okay," he says, eventually. He looks away, and comes back around all business. He nearly chokes on the transition, but once he's in the game, he's in the game. "Okay," Sam says again. "So do you have the blade?"

He's so far in the game Dean realizes he's going to have to scramble to catch up. 

Because Dean doesn't know what he has. As far as the First Blade goes, obviously he didn't jump out of the ocean with a sword in hand. But he feels different; he's pretty sure he feels different. 

Well, honestly he hasn't been that great at keeping track lately. And anyway, maybe that's just organ failure. There's killing intent in him for sure, and he's ready to waste something--he almost doesn't care what. But that's not necessarily new, and "ready" don't guarantee a whole lot, results-wise.

"I--" he stalls.

When he tries to backtrack, re-trace his steps, Cain and his metaphysics get in the way, or Crowley and his bargain bin spell fall short, because Dean gets as far as ocean, and wet, and really fucking loud, and he can't--he doesn't know how to hold on to being whale. He can't grab hold of it anymore, and when he tries there's that pain between his eyes, the kind that you get when you're trying to run through a life-or-death scenario on too little sleep and you can't for the life of you ever get past step one or two, and pushing any further just socks you in the face. All his efforts dribble out, hemorrhagic defeat.

He remembers freedom. He remembers power. He remembers turning tail. "I think," he slurs, "I talked to a porpoise."

"Hey, hey. Stay with me. And then what?"

Dean feels Sam's hand squeeze his shoulder.

"And then I ate it."

"Uh, why? I mean--never mind. What'd it say?"

"I was a whale. Whales swim around and they eat things. I don't know what else to tell you, man."

Actually, in flashes, one thing he does remember is tearing that porpoise apart. That had been bright clear fun. But push farther than the freely given and it's just blank pain.

Dizzying pain.

Mostly, he remembers running the fuck away.

Dean's hands find a distraction.

There's a remote on the table. Weird, since there's no TV that Dean can find. 

When he punches it on, all the lights in the suite exchange themselves for a scattering of rotating stars. Sam startles when Dean drops the darkness onto them. Then sound erupts from all sides--ambient guitar riffs. 

The next channel boasts dock sounds, and flashing pointillizations of light that are meant to recreate the glint of the sun on sleek boats, or maybe flashbombs. Dean's not sure.

The next goes underwater. The light from above attenuates and refracts. The noise filters into the room round and whole.

Leave it to Crowley to deck out his penthouse with the most involved nightlight in the entire fucking universe. _Of course you should be afraid of the dark._

Sam's less than interested in the toy, though. "Dean, focus. You gotta give me more to work with."

"I'm doing the best I can."

" _I'm_ doing the best I can. Catch up. What else do you remember? You were gone for hours, and... you know, you came back pretty freaked."

Blood in the water, he thinks. No big--the porpoise's. Then the brightness from below, the screaming. The brightness and the screaming, that had been something. Obviously. But fuck, his head, and his everything. It's like all of that, in the ocean, wasn't his anymore. He can't read it, he can't handle it. And, Dean realizes, he fucking wants it back. Because of what he remembers, it had felt pretty damn good.

He must say this, or part of this, to Sam, because Sam starts in on this thing where he wants him to imagine being back and just walk it through. Sam wants him to use the night light or some shit to get him in the zone.

"I'm pretty sure we had this unspoken promise where we get through this without any New Age-y dreamcatcher crap," Dean interrupts.

"I will get out the ouija board if I have to," says Sam. "If the shoe fits. And you're the one playing with the--with the fucking--"

"Nightlight."

"--disco ball in the first place. I'm just saying, the memories are there--even if they don't feel like yours. And we need them, so."

"So, what?"

"So go get them!"

Dean lifts his head enough to quirk an eyebrow at Sam. If Sam thinks that's supposed to sound like it's even in the ballpark of easy, he's being really obtuse right now. "Dude, that's like asking someone what they did at Burning Man. I _can't_."

"This isn't some fucking drug trip. Take some responsibility, Dean. I mean, christ--"

If that doesn't feel like being called out, Dean's not sure what does. But he's just trying to make it to the finish line. By whatever means necessary, he needs to make it to the finish line. (Except, he thinks, at the bottom of the ocean--at the bottom of the ocean, it hadn't mattered. He hadn't cared. When he lets himself go under then the finish line doesn't matter. Everything had just been power and sound and the sound of power. It had all seemed so beautiful but when he thinks about it now, right here, he's scared. His jaw aches, and so does his throat.)

If Sam wants responsibility from him, he can show him goddamn responsibility. He starts from the top. "Look, man. After that church, and you were in that hospital--I just. Yeah, I made the shitty decision where you live. I knew was going to lose you either way, so I made the shitty decision where you live." 

And he did lose him. Sam's still sitting right in front of Dean, but in the slowest possible fucking way, Dean lost him.

Sam looks more surprised by the change of topic than he should be. Dean can't imagine a world where Sam's not thinking about this every single time he forgets to keep himself preoccupied. Sam's silence makes him uncomfortable, so Dean keeps talking. "Don't tell me I wasn't thinking about the consequences--I was. Everything's got consequences; that's all we ever get."

Dean's a poor loser, even when he expects the outcome; and expecting loss doesn't mean he'll take it any better. But if Sam thinks he honestly saw them headed anywhere else, he must come across as more optimistic than he'd thought. A regular bucket of sunshine.

Sam purses his lips. Something illegible crashes through him. When he surfaces, he says, "What about the Blade? How much do you know about _those_ consequences?"

What was this, Nuremburg?

No, he hadn't asked specifics of the Mark, or the Blade, or this whole whale thing. Because if he had, he might not have gone through with any of it; he might have just stalled out (and he still fucking did, he thinks; he got all the way to the edge of the ocean and he still choked) and let things happen around him. And he's not supposed to do that.

He's not even sure how that got decided, but it's in him, and like so many other things, it's not letting go.

He doesn't answer, but Sam presses forward anyway. It's like this relentless stream of questions Dean can't swallow, and they pile and pile up. "Do you know what Crowley put in his spell?"

No, Dean doesn't. Again and again, no. But now that Sam's forced the contemplation, Dean has a fair inkling. It's the First Blade and the Mark of Cain, after all. 

"I don't know what you want from me," he mumbles, finally. 

Sam just looks at him like he wants more. Dean's not sure if he can give that. He and Sam can talk double standards and reckless, stupid things until they're blue in the face, some part of Dean still believes that if he throws himself down hard enough, he might bounce. If he drives hard in any direction, he'll find paved road again. If he kicks up enough momentum, he'll know what to do. Maybe this is how you save yourself.

On the other hand, he's not even sure he knows anymore the difference between acceptance and apathy, or driving hard and driving away. No matter what he says or what he does, the damage's done; it doesn't undo, just accrues in fractals, in every direction. And if Dean feels sick about anything, it's that this isn't rock bottom. Fucking somehow, he can actually still do worse by Sam; and he still has more of Sam to lose. 

He doesn't know what he's doing anymore.

"Then follow my lead," says Sam. They're sitting in the dark with this ridiculous fucking soundtrack going, and Sam says follow his lead. The light slips over his face and something about him seems calm.

"Where's Cas?" Dean asks instead. "Have you heard from him?"

Sam's calm tessellates, and his pain and his exhaustion show through a little too much to sell the veneer, but all he says is, " _I'm_ here, Dean. Let's start with that."

It seems a little bit late to be starting anything. But Dean wipes his hands down his face and takes a great, steady breath. He rejects the nausea quickening in his stomach and ignores the bleating of his kidneys and he fixates on the cool, dark feeling rolling at the back of his head. He feels out the pain and he lets himself dip into its nothingness, its dissociative confusion of sensation. It distills, refracts, and scrambles, and it sounds like bells. If he's gonna make it through this, this is the only way. He's so sorry, Sam.

What Dean wants is to be on the road again. He wants Sam to be happy. Or he wants Sam to stop looking at him like that, to stop having to look at him like that. He wants clarity, or he just wants something to be easy for once. And maybe Dean doesn't know what he wants--just what he'll settle for. (Except he's not supposed to settle.)

He lets the sound of the ocean beat against his ear drums.

Really, though. He wouldn't mind the road; the Impala was power and freedom without the price tag. But mostly all he thinks of now is the clear peal of that underwater bell, the hum of tuning forks, the cool, blue thing in his head and his insides trying out new configurations. Driving through Wyoming and wishing it were already the sea.

He can feel that again, that change. Like he's backsliding. But maybe he's grabbing for it, because when he gives himself to the ocean inside himself, he feels awake, directed, real. He feels right. And he can speak. "All right, let's do this."

"There should be something bright," says Sam.

"Loud," Dean corrects. But Sam's right, too--it had sounded bright. It had been bright. Dean wonders what kind of freakish websites Sam had even unearthed, to know that. 

Then he gives himself to the ocean and doesn't let the thought derail him. There should be something bright and loud.

"Fine, loud," says Sam. "So you saw it then, or--heard it, whatever. I think that's what we're looking for."

"Well, we're in trouble if the Blade is a shiny sound at the bottom of the ocean."

"I don't think it's the Blade," says Sam.

Dean knows it's not the blade. The more he lets the ocean come back into him, the more certain he is. He can feel the ringing in his jaw and the playful bloodlust in all his teeth and he's pretty sure now that the Blade isn't in the ocean any longer. Why was the sword never an actual goddamn sword? Dean twists uncomfortable in his skin and half expects it to be turning black and fatty.

Sam's still fixated on the bright and deep. "I think it's a door," he says. "We might not even need the blade. We--"

"Sam, what--" Dean stops. Suddenly the ocean is fear all over again, because he needs to be him, he needs to be here, he needs to be here for Sam-- "Where are you getting this from?"

(But you can't be any of those things. Don't you know that by now?)

Sam regards him with that illegible expression of his. It's something hungry and desperately hopeful and by grace of that hope, it's twisted. Dean doesn't like it. 

Then it's gone, and Sam's just Sam. "Dean, please. Just trust me."

And Dean almost does. 

It feels for the tiniest moment like maybe there's a way out. If Dean would just say yes, and if he could get on board with this and grab ahold of it and make it work, if he could be certain that he and Sam could make it work, then maybe they'd be okay. He could close the doors on the Blade welling up inside of him and the ocean pouring back into them. He could back out of everything and trust Sam when he says that they're going to be okay. But every time Sam says 'follow my lead' and Dean listens, they follow it into a muddy dead end. They follow it into sharp gravel. They follow it into rain. They can follow it into a church in Nowhere, New York, a cemetery in Kansas, a liberty bell in South Dakota. They're all the same place. And Dean won't go there again.

He doesn't want a way out, anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean shudders through a zoetropic series of impressions (or affectations, or identifications), each one still and jagged. When he opens his mouth, Sam's not sure whether he'll say--"I love you" or "Who are you"--and he's not sure which is better.

Dean says, "I'm just doing what needs to be done."

The memory of Gadreel skates just below Sam's vision. He is so fucking tired of that line. He doesn't care if Dean's just lying or if he's helpless against it or some chimerical fusion of both; he can't let it stand anymore.

"I've watched that destroy you, Dean." Sam's throat is tight. "Who needs it done? Who are you helping? Cas? Kevin? Who the fuck do you think you're helping?"

"The planet. Canada, I guess. Apparently not you," he answers, sour and accusatory.

Dean jumps up from his perch on the coffee table and crashes to the ground almost immediately. His hand flails out, making a grab for Sam's chair, and in the dark Sam jerks away from the rush of air near the side of his face, disappears into pain as his ribs shift. Dean swears, and Sam swears, and when Sam resurfaces, Dean's still on his knees.

He coughs, moist and crackly with phlegm. 

"I've watched that destroy you," Sam repeats.

"Sam, you really don't want to do this right now," Dean wheezes, after a pause, and struggles to his feet. He leans heavily on Sam's chairback.

Sam's pretty sure he does want to do this right now. Because they don't have any time left--if he lets this go now, he's not going to get another chance. He leans forward, hands questing for the remote. He needs the real lights back on; he can't see anything like this. If he's gonna do anything to help Dean, he needs to find him first. He needs to find himself.

"You keep telling me what I want," he says. "But you have no fucking idea, do you?"

"I think you were pretty clear."

"It's like, you've already decided who I am, so what's the point of really talking to me, right?" Behind him, Dean wobbles toward the panoramic window. Sam hears him thud against it. Then he picks up again. It's like he's trying to occupy all of the room at once, seeking to fill it with an increasingly agitated fervor. 

Sam presses him anyway; no backing down this time. "Name one time in the last forty-eight hours where you were even thinking about me as something more than a consequence. Where honest to god, you wanted to know how I felt, or what I was thinking about, or what I was _worried_ about-- Because man, you don't have to, but don't pretend you are."

Dean doesn't even try. "So what's your excuse then?" he shoots back.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't you think I'd do anything to make this right?" Dean doesn't answer.

"Dean, what the hell are you talking about. What part of this is 'right,' exactly?"

"I'm sorry about the ribs," Dean says, in a succession of disjointed pronouncements. So he did remember.

"Whatever," says Sam, as he feels the energy spool from him. They hit fever pitches, and they trough, and spike, and trough. This is a trough, now, and it makes Sam feel soft and patient. Like he doesn't need to fight, or push. "You didn't mean to." 

_You weren't you_ , Sam means. Which feels comforting, even though they hardly ever are--themselves, only themselves, that is. There's always too many shit variables they can't delimit.

Dean says, "Yeah." But then Dean says, "I mean, I-- I had to stop you somehow. I had to keep you from following me, I..."

Sam's brow furrows. (He finally finds the remote. It's on the ground, beneath the table. Pain flashes through him as he tries to lower himself to reach it, and he puts his hands to his ribs.)

The tension in him jacks back up to eleven.

That meant that Dean remembers, and Dean meant it. He'd known. He'd known what he was doing and he knew what it would to do Sam and for some god unknown fucking reason, he did it anyway. Sam's not sure why he's so surprised, and then he isn't. Because here they are again.

"Dean, what are you doing?" Sam asks. Five words Sam's been keeping in him so damn long now that they're free they just seem musty and inadequate. "Why are you doing this"--to yourself, to me--"to us?"

Dean shakes his head. For a split second he seems painfully, hopelessly lost. His eyes are glassy and bright when the weak light sifts over him, and he breathes in sharply. This is all so fucked up, this just got so fucked up, he mutters to no one, so softly it's more suggestion than sound. Then some gears must drop into alignment, because he stops his fretting, and he lets everything fall away. Forget it, it's fucked up, so forget it.

He wanders toward the door.

"Dean, what are you doing." There's a sudden, wild panic roaring through his heart but he can't make his body move an inch.

"I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know." 

And Sam wonders if he's welcome to put that in whatever tense he wants.

Then disaster triangulates.

The radio, its pelagic noise, buzzes out, and the lights go with it. There's a knocking at the door. The world seems to close in on Sam all at once. Instantly he primes for a fight, he is ready for a fight, and some other complex part of him wails and is lost. Its moment's done. Out over the horizon the clouds are streaking rain again, but there's a black-purple cloud serpentining toward them. 

Demon smoke. 

The window doesn't shatter on impact, but the demons smack and splatter billow and ricochet like a jet stream of water. The glass cracks--a hairline. Dean moves toward it instead of away.

"I'm guessing Abbadon finally made it past border control," Dean offers, more to the window than to Sam.

He puts his right hand to the window and the demon smoke twists and coalesces around that place like filaments in a plasma globe. "Tell her I'm coming."

And they listen. They listen to Dean. All the fucking demons in the sky and they don't matter there's worse right here, inside.

Outside, the knocking ceases, and their door creaks open without their acquiescence. Warm, regal light from the hallway slips into the doorway before the kitchen staff--named Clara. She doesn't look twice at the window or her webby, putrid guests. Her eyes flick black when she looks at Dean, and she bows her head ever so slightly when she leaves the cart she' brought. Sam doesn't miss this reverence, either.

This whole time, Dean's always been the most dangerous thing in the room. And Sam can't stop him.

Dean jumps toward the door again.

"Crowley mentioned room service," he says, completely heedless of his newfound status. Like it's a non-object, mundane fluff. "By the way." 

He lifts the cover to reveal some kind of braised meat, pale and feathered like the underside of a mushroom, and reads out the description on the receipt. "Shark fin, marinated in a piquant red sauce. Complimentary from the management."

Dean doesn't say anything for a moment.

Then, very gently, Dean pushes the cart toward Sam. It rolls across the tile until it hits the back of what had been Sam's chair. "Well, good luck with that," he says, and slips out the door. 

Dean walks out on him.

There's no fight, and no violence. Just absence.

Sam doesn't move for a long time. Whole seconds. Then he steps toward the cart--it's just a little step--and takes the shark in his hands and tears off a chunk with his teeth. There's no one there to take it from him, or to be angry, or to tell it in a stupid little story too many years later.

Sam chokes the spell down as fast as he can, and he eats it all, razor blade heat clawing at his throat. Piquant tears prick the creases of his eyes. 

Still, he licks his fingers.

\--

Downstairs, Crowley is taking twilight tea. His only company is a family of four, sloppily human, huddled around coffees and a mountain of suitcases tagged by Air France. They look jet-lagged and ghoulish, but as much as Sam would like to ignore them, he can't. There's more than exhaustion in them--it's terror, too, lush and newly sown. Sam would know the difference.

They're this minuscule glimmer of some tremendous world Sam's not sure they're ever going to have time to see again, and they've already failed them. Sam's already failed them.

Crowley rouses him by clearing is throat. He gestures vaguely at Sam's body. "Who owns you, Moose? Are we dating above our caste again?"

Sam touches his face, then looks down at his hands. They're covered in Enochian. He touches his ribs. Right, sharks don't have bones; and he's guessing cartilage doesn't brand well. He tries not to think about it too much.

After taking a closer look, Crowley says, "Though it does explain a lot. I wondered how you were able to hide an entire angel in you. The spell's a bit like a two-way mirror--clever, clever Castiel. Anyway, if you're running after Rocky Aqua, he's gone. I'd hazard he's rushed back to Sealand." 

"Abaddon was here," Sam says. "Why not just settle it upstairs?"

"Home field advantage, I'd imagine," says Crowley.

Sam looks back to the quiet, haunted family at the other table. He can't help it. They're looking at a Frommer's Canada like it's a death registry.

"But the spell's done," Sam objects, though clearly it's not.

Crowley doesn't disagree, exactly, but his hesitation makes it clear they're beyond both myth and magic now. "Well," he says. "The sea made an offer, and Dean made a choice. You follow?"

Yes he does, and no he doesn't.

"What did he say? Did he tell you--" Sam wheel-spins breathlessly. "Dean, I mean. Did he--"

"What, to them?" Crowley gestures toward the reedlike family, its children sullen and its wife and husband vacant and elastic, because Sam hasn't taken his eyes off them. "Horror doesn't need words. Use your imagination."

Sam doesn't want to. He's losing everything. At every turn, he loses just a little bit more, cedes a little more control, breaks a few more promises to himself. He tells himself that it's to find that gateway--Gadreel's gateway. It's to find Dean. It's to help Dean. But he knows this game, and he knows how it ends. What it will do to him. It's going to destroy them both.

So no, Sam does not imagine. Sam lets go.

Crowley smiles. 

"You can already feel it, can't you. Didn't I tell you 'faster and easier'? And not even your chum Dick got to have my blood. It's quite the _plat du jour._ " He folds his napkin on top of his plate and cracks his neck. "You can't say I never gave back."

\--

It's raining again.

Sam lets his jacket drop to the ground. Then his flannel. The skin on his arms and over his shoulder blades goosebumps instantly, and as he pulls his T-shirt over his head, so slowly it's like he's part of some dark processional (his ribs still scrape with pain), the air he sucks in is cold. But there's a separate fire burning inside him now.

It used to be one of his favorite feelings in the world, that contrast.

Sam twists an anti-possession bracelet from his wrist--a stand-in for his stolen tattoo he'd meant to be temporary and then wasn't. He kicks off his boots, and toes his socks from his feet. Then he drops his pants.

When Abaddon arrives, Sam is bare. 

The heavy tromp of her combat boots echoes in the empty arena.

"I made your brother a promise a few months ago," she says, looking Sam from head to toe. She doesn't acknowledge Crowley. "I've come to collect. So where is he?"

Nine whole months, and Abaddon's the only one who keeps her promises.

She's not that talkative, either. Sam would have thought she'd gloat. But maybe that familiarity is reserved for closer kin; a lot can happen in nine months, and the immediacy of her, at least for Sam, is much diminished. She's been building an army, but she came alone. She's a Knight, but she came weaponless. She's a demon, but if she's touched the human world at all, not even the Billings Local Weekly noticed. She may be a queen, but like Crowley, she has no kingdom, either.

She wants Dean. Such beautiful carvings, she says. She knows one of the artists, and he is _very_ hard to find. It's been over a century since she saw him last, but she's a huge fan of his work. And irrespective of the decoration, all Dean's little nooks and crannies are just delectable. It takes a long time to season a body like that.

She reads Sam's body again, the Enochian sharper against his skin now more than ever--scar white, where the rest of him is purpling--and she asks, "Whose side are you on, Sam? Hiding from Heaven like that gives a girl all kinds of wrong impressions." 

And if his brother's a no-show, she doesn't mind an impulse buy instead.

Sam doesn't even have it in him to panic. Everyone always wants him for something--for an angelic incubator, or a vessel; for relief of loneliness. He's giving himself to Abaddon, to the memory of Gadreel's shining gateway, to his memory of Dean, and all he can think is this time, he brought it on himself this time. He blinks, and his vision returns monochromatic. The stench of sulfur overwhelms. The pain in his ribs abates as his bones turn to cartilage, and the air gets harder to breathe. There is an invincible fire inside him.

And all he can think is, this time, he brought this on himself.

If there is more to this, if there is philosophy, or politics, or even myth, Sam doesn't hear it. Though the color bleeds out of the world, the blacks get blacker and the whites flare up like magnesium burning. It could be sunrise behind Abaddon, behind the bleachers; it could be a storm. Who is Sam to guess? And without color, it's hard to take Abaddon seriously--not without that hair. It's hard to see Crowley at all. The wavelengths of all sound stretch, become unrecognizable.

Sam closes his eyes.

This isn't what Dean said it felt like. But then, Sam's a whole other animal.

Abaddon rushes him, a gyre of acrid smoke and a sudden olfactory assault. Sulfur, sweat, blood, and underneath it all, jasmine. Abaddon in a blue cocktail dress, nervous and hiding it under her mother's perfume, ready for her induction. (Josie, Sam corrects himself. Whatever's left of unfortunate Josie.) Her smoke feels like marine layer, heavy and wet like it's hungered for something like Sam for far too long.

Sam greets her, head on.

Because this will not be his nightmare. This is not a cross to bear, and he is no one's weapon. Crowley can step in as close as he wants, and Abaddon can try what she wants, Gadreel can leave himself behind and Dean might offer to leave nothing, but he's Sam Winchester. All the blood and all he spells in the world cannot change that. So bring it.

Abaddon shoots to the back of his mouth and Sam breathes through her. She twists in his throat, like a snake falling from a tree. She slips across his pieces, and does not find purchase.

"What did you do to him?" she slurs with Sam's mouth, though it's a drooping sort of puppetry. Sam figures she can say whatever she wants; he doesn't care.

Sam's bones lose their rigidity, and as his femurs curl and his knees flatten, he drops to the ground. He shudders in a thatch of his own hair as it drops from him, and when he looks down his skin is dark, scars iridescent white. He sports the beginning of fins. The air grows thinner. Abaddon flutters through him like a lost thing.

Crowley stands above them with his hands in his blazer pockets. "Post-lapsarian red tape, my dear," he says. He's never sounded more smug. He puts a hand to Sam's back and begins to shove Sam's body into the water. "No animals."

"Oh, and in case my boys at the border missed you: Welcome to Canada."

\--

For that first moment when Sam goes under, the smell of herring overpowers sulfur. Because that's what all of this is isn't it, the white murkiness to the water and the globules hanging from all the eelgrass--herring season. That is, herring semen. It figures.

Then the current snaps up Sam's attentions and he's sailing toward some new scent. He cuts so cleanly through the water it might as well be air. Abaddon slicks against his insides like an aerosol grime, his propulsive surge pinning her in place.

(And as unbidden as ever: A reminder that Gadreel loves the sea.)

Abaddon careens against the confusion of his vanishing lymph and expanding bowels with razor blade fury. He's disappointed to find that he can still feel pain.

Still, Sam sprints, and he has no reason now to stop. He's so fast he leaves a rip in his wake. 

What happens next is fast, too, though this time Sam's a practiced hand. When Dean's double rows of teeth loom straight in front of him, his black form just perceptible from the rest of the ocean, all Sam has to do is remind himself that this is what he came here for. This is the scent he followed. This will not be his nightmare; he is ready.

Dean nips him first, then rams him hard, and even with the benefit of expectation it's jarring. To feel Dean come at him like that, with that complete abandon--or was it pleasure?--can't be anything but jarring. Sam is still Sam, will always be Sam. And that will never not be jarring. Dean rakes his teeth against Sam's pelvis, and as Dean rams him again from below, Sam's blood ribbons out in slow spirals.

Sam can't move. He's on his back and suddenly he's paralyzed. He tries to scream himself toward motion, Abaddon ricocheting inside him, but it's useless. It's like his body's not his anymore, after all this, after all these fucking intrusions, _now_ his body isn't his anymore. 

He twitches his caudal fin when he means to thrash it.

He's pinned upside down and disoriented, defenseless. Then he feels Dean's jaws close over him. 

It's almost gentle.

Dean doesn't tear, and he doesn't rip. He holds Sam in his jaws and slowly, slowly, Abaddon peels from Sam's gills. She smells like sulfur and carbon chains and salt.

Sam shudders in response to the proximity of the trembling, preternatural power laced through Dean's jaw. Abaddon's not smoking out, even if she stood a chance of one day evaporating from the sea, returning to land. She's not being exorcized. This is atomic. This is obliteration. And when she comes to pieces, there is no soul, or even a twisted hollow of one. She's just several billion nameless, dispersed atoms.

_We all came from the sea._

But Sam can't breathe like this, upside down and immobile. Abaddon leaks from his body until there's none of her left, but Dean's hold doesn't relent.

Sam can't breathe.

Sam can't breathe.

He's not sure if Dean means to save him or to kill him, and he's not sure if either of them can tell the difference. It's like there's no stopping him; he is patience and resolution and he's not letting go.

Sam can't breathe.

They are, after all, the sort who strangle. Sam can't breathe, and Dean is suffocating him. 

Dean's jaws close tighter. He pierces the skin.

When the blood hits Sam's nose, every part of him flushes with berserk energy. He smells his blood, and all that terror, all that love and fury he thought he'd left topside crashes through the levee, and he thrashes and snaps and he shoots out from between Dean's teeth and right side up again. The relief of water flushes over his gills, and his blood streamers out behind him. He is free, he is free, he is free.

His blood is all around him, and he can feel the tug of his ruined streamline where Dean bit down.

But it's Sam's blood, and this is a blood spell. Whatever else they are, he and Dean are brothers.

And Dean begins to change.

Like the persistence of memory, Dean liquidates. His eye patches droop, and seem to weep. When he swims, his sloughing skin billows out baglike and fatty, and Dean clicks and whines in dual frequencies. Sam doesn't know if he's speaking or screaming, but he's not hunting anymore. 

Sam drifts, aimless and upward. It's like there's nothing in the sea but his blood, and the scent was exhilarating, and then nauseating. He can't see or even smell Dean split apart, though even in monochrome it'd be difficult to miss. Dean's arteries untwist, his skin dragging so far below him it's translucent and herniated like an overstuffed plastic bag.

They ascend, Sam in lazier and lazier circles, dizziness outstripping urgency, and Dean with nothing Sam can read at all. Dean just ascends, and his body reduces, and his organs fall from him.

And Sam's still losing him, isn't he.

Pieces of his brother are falling to the bottom of the sea.


	8. Chapter 8

He imagines it's a lot like swimming through an oil spill, except with a torpedo on your ass. Or, you know, a shark. When his knees scrape sand and he breaks the surface, Dean opens his eyes. 

There is blood everywhere.

"Sam," Dean tries, though no sound comes out. And when it does, it's wordless and meaningless--from a language that means nothing to him now, and even less to the air around him. His jaw aches, and he's not sure if it's chattering because he's cold, or because of all the vibrations in the air, the screaming, the reverberation of Sam's frantic thrashing, his own haphazard front strokes, the residual churn of the water. There are stringy globules of fat floating in the water, airy bladders leftover from organs Dean no longer needs, or doesn't need quite that much of. (Though what he's left with feels sluggish and tremorous and he wonders if he couldn't take a bit more back. What he's got ain't doing it.) Mucosal blood and oily, rubbery skin--black and pink and that familiar deep, dark red--skate until they hit the sand. Pieces of Dean wash onto shore, in jagged patterns governed by the lap of the waves and the pull of the tide. Dean does his best to swim. Beat the undertow, which was stronger than he might have imagined. It's supposed to be a fucking bay, isn't it--a safe harbor.

He can't-- 

He can't pull himself all the way up out of the water; his arms are too leaden and his gut hurts and his heart's having a field day as it is. And it's just fucking cold; he's not sure if the bay or the wind feels worse. It's all he can do to crawl to the wrack zone and try not to drown. It would be stupid to drown now, after all that time at the bottom of the sea.

Immediately he feels his thoughts spiraling back downward, toward porpoise attaches and bright screaming and whalesong and power and power and power, but he says "Oh god, Sam," and this time forms the words as best he can. His teeth are chattering and his jaws are numb, or locked, or on reserve.

There's enough chum in the water--there's enough _him_ in the water, Dean amends--that it would have taken Sam some time to find him, were he looking for breakfast. And though it's harder than Dean might have thought to pick him out in the haze of his own viscera, Sam's a pretty big goddamn shark. (He'd seemed so small, before. So insignificant.)

He's swimming in a disoriented zig zag, and Dean's instantly glad his body left behind such a mess. He doesn't want to know how much of this blood is Sam's. He doesn't want to be able to see what he's done this time.

He should, he thinks. He should want to know how bad it is, whether to call EMS or not (what's 911 in Canada?), whether darker, more pricey options might be a better bet. How much of Sam Crowley would give him for his soul. How much angels would, could, do for a shark. But there's a screaming in his head, and a clangor of bells, and somewhere at the back of his mind, a rock band is singing about being a rock band.

And he knows there is nothing he can do anymore.

Still, he goes to him. On his hands sand knees, he tries to go to him.

"Sammy--"

Everything he wants to say to Sam threatens to overspill. Which figures, because at the moment, Sam is one thousand pounds of big purple shark, and he is not here to listen. He cannot listen. Dean gets the horrible feeling that maybe that's what he wants; maybe all he wants is Sam when he can't talk back.

No.

"C'mon man," Dean chatters. Everything sounds and smells and looks like blood. There's something bright, new and red spinning from Sam's side, Dean's sure. He wished Sam would just beach himself, or grow legs and arms and hair and be Sam again, and familiar again (but he's a stranger, he's always been at least half a stranger, hasn't he). Human again. 

Human again. There's enochian spilled across Sam's skin like a rambling brand. Dean knows what it is, but he sees the script and all he thinks is 'angels.' Angels in Sam. Angels laying claim to Sam. (His fault.)

Sam approaches the shore--or lets the tide bring him in, in any case. It throws him against the sand. Sam's probably about as calm as a mangled shark gets, which isn't very. But he doesn't bite. He doesn't touch Dean at all.

That makes one of them.

The cool dark thing at the back of Dean's mind wishes desperately Sam were on his back, sedated and immobile. Calm, the way he'd been when Abaddon crushed out of him. He'd seemed so docile then, static the way they never were, and drowsy, unguarded. At peace.

But there'd been no peace there, had there. Because it wasn't peace, it wasn't calm; it was a shark, it was Sam, stripped of control of his body. It was Dean holding him captive. It was Dean drowning him. Not peaceful at all.

He could have killed him.

He still might have.

"I'm so sorr--" Dean gags and chokes as seawater and blood lap into his mouth. The added effort of expelling them from his lungs doesn't do him any favors, and the next wave is worse. "I-- I--"

Something rough slides past his arm, and Dean hopes to god it's Sam's big, toothy head, because he throws a leaden arm over it, him and shore acting as a vise, and draws his other arm along as many of Sam's teeth as he can find. 

C'mon, Flipper, he thinks. _Come on, Sammy._

There's an explosion of sound and froth, and Dean feels it in his jaw with such force the space behind his eyes lights up. 

There's a keening wail, like the peal of a tiny bell.

Then there are hands grabbing at his elbow. Everything tastes more and more like blood.

 _Sam,_ he wants to shout again. Sam. But the crash of the waves is louder, the gurgle of water as it sucks back over gravel is louder.

You don't get Sam anymore, he thinks.

He listens to that bright, long bell and then he thinks he might be ready.

He had better be.

He's already made his choice.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam comes back coughing and sputtering, which hurts so bad his entire body goes rigid, and he thinks somebody must be doing it to him, somebody has to be inflicting this pain; there's no way it could possibly be incidental. It is too artful to be a natural pain. But if he holds his breath, the pain abates, and Sam is welcomed into new fits of sensation, the chill of the water, the sting of it in his eyes, at his side. A small wave sweeps over him, and he dyes the froth pink.

If he opens his eyes, he's pretty sure all they're going to do is cry, so he doesn't bother. But he reaches out for something to ground him--he's not picky--and he finds Dean's arm. The blood smells like him and the moan Sam's touch inspires sounds like him, and Sam pulls him closer. His choice is between unappealing and less appealing grotesques.

Everything he touches screams at him, like his hands have the power to wean more from what's around him than his mind can handle. He's tapped out and overloaded. But the tactile feeling of being that close to Dean is electrifying, and Sam cannot let go. They beach at the strandline, their bodies intermingled with steaming pile of what was once whale, and was once shark. There's blood and tissue and fat and fish everywhere. A tremendous smell. His eyes slide open a crack and the world spirals toward him in shades of white and black, like Hell.

And they are not alone.

This isn't some secluded beach; they're at the marina. The water's red and the smell is redder, there are boats like dominoes all down the pier. They're lying in the loading zone and there are people. There are people walking past. The people, they don't stop. They don't even seem to register the carnage. Like he and Dean and all their blood are too commonplace, too expected, to merit pause.

It's herring season, after all. It'd be silly to get caught up in someone else's destruction.

This, more than anything, makes Sam feel like they've lost. Because this is--they are--the kind of thing that deserves to be left to the dark. But it's morning, and the city is awake, and Crowley's Canada doesn't give a damn. That's it's problem. There's no attack, or aggression; they just don't give a good goddamn. They don't know how, or they're hoping they won't have to, or maybe they're just afraid what might happen, or what they might have to admit, if they do. The people on the pier look straight ahead and Sam and Dean do not exist to them.

He's not sure whether he should laugh or cry.

"Dean," Sam manages instead. He still has a hand fastened to Dean's elbow. He feels rigid and creaking and he's not sure what the point of bones is; they're too solid and too breakable. If he tries to shout he just swallows blood and water, and his ribs grind sharply. "Dean, we gotta go--"

"They carried salmon on their heads," gurgles Dean. He drinks in water and he doesn't seem to care. All the whales were just carrying salmon on their heads, he says. So he carried a salmon on his head, too. There was a song, and they followed it, and it led to something bright and round, like a mirror.

"Yes," says Sam. Because that's the door--that's the door Gadreel remembers, too. That's the picture in Sam's head, that's what they've been looking for all this time. If he could just hold onto this. If he could get Dean to hold onto this. But it’s hard to keep up his litanies and mantras when inside his own head all he can hear is the rush of blood, and blood, and more blood. The scent of everything around them. His own hunger.

Sam's body can't decide whether he's lightheaded, bloodless, or wired; he knows he's hurting, probably dying, and still the only thing that really seems to matter is the residual taste of demon blood at the back of his throat. He spits red.

He opens his eyes. The twilight is almost too bright, compared to what was under the waves. His prune fingers are blue and luminous, blurry in front of him. Dean is a still, silent mass at the other end of his touch.

"Dean," he croaks.

"Dean."

But no, Sam realizes. No, that's not how this ends, is it.

Sam tries to pitch himself like a tent, on all fours. His arms shake under his own weight but he manages a sitting position. He curls over himself and tries to apply pressure to his side. He's bleeding, he thinks. Oh well.

With this free arm, he reaches out for Dean again.

Their bits and pieces coalesce around him, hunks of raw material drawn in by some deep, inescapable pull. Dean's skin feels blubbery, and he's dark, losing his color and his angles, delimited appendages, to the transformation. He can't keep his own shape anymore (his real shape, Dean's real shape, Sam's brother's shape). He's taking from the sea and he's becoming the sea, and when he's whole he will be that whale again.

If Sam stays, Dean will take him, too. Like all their viscera and organic clutter, and all the cells free-floating in the sea, all those paleolithic stamps and reminders, Dean will take him if Sam lets him. Dean will swallow him whole. Sam has to leave.

"Dean," he says again, because he wants last words. He wants to feel his brother's arms around him. He wants their chance to make things right.

He's not going to get it.

Instead, Sam loses his brother. And like he's been waiting to do all weekend, Sam feels failure--he feels it like it's the only thing he's ever done in his life. When he tries to stand his knees buckle under him, and they hit the concrete driveway under the sand, unforgiving, with a jolt that Sam feels almost exclusively in his ribs. He's lost more blood than he thought, then.

If he can't have Dean, at the very least he wants to watch him go. He needs to see for sure that yes, Dean can be that whale again, he can swim towards that bright song, or mirror, or door, or whatever it is to him. Because Sam wants a body, at the very least he wants to be able to burn Dean's body, but Dean's not dying, is he. He's just gone, because there are more ways than death to lose someone.

Sam crawls up and away from Dean and the strandline and he doesn't look back.

It's where Crowley finds him still, when he trots down from the walkway--he's the only thing who comes down to investigate; it's herring season, it's herring season--and drops a black, monogrammed towel over his head.

"God invented shame milennia ago. Don't tell me it hasn't caught on in your circles," he says.

Sam pulls the towel down around his waist. He uses it mostly to soak up blood.

Crowley drops Sam's jacket in front of him and says, "I've brought around your car."

He jangles the keys.

Sam can't even bring himself to register his nakedness, or openness. Crowley's infection into his privacy and personal effects.

"We need to go," Sam scrapes out. "Van Nuys. Now."

Crowley can't conceal his surprise; and if he can't do that, how much control can he have, really, Sam thinks bitterly. How much a king can he be. Even his Canada knows better than that.

"You're leaving Dean? Seriously?"

"We've got work to do."

\--

Between and within his lapses in consciousness, Sam loses his brother over and over again. Sometimes the world is colorful, but mostly it's not. And try as he might, it's never Dean's voice Sam conjures right, or even his face. It's not the way his knee jogs when he's driving and thinking too much, or the contents of his pockets, or the things he's said, or even what he's done--anything he's ever done--that falls through his head. He can think about all of these things, but his imagination, or his attention span, can't hold them, and they're only reiterated fragments of stock footage and still frames, punctuated by ungoverned fear and fury and gut-wrenching, embarrassing, confusion. What Sam feels most is the pulse of Dean through the water; Dean expanded to twelve tons and twenty feet, oil black and nothing but screaming, wordless, illegible sound. Dean's scars spread wide and the spray of the ocean as he leaps away. The gluey, underwater sound of his descent and his smell shrinking and attenuating away from him.

It's like he's not even allowed to remember Dean as he'd like. When Sam closes his eyes, the image of Dean's whale cannot be shaken.

The next time Sam comes to, the mile markers mark miles again, and gas advertises by the gallon.

Crowley is topping them off and fiddling with the radio (had it been on before?). Dean's wallet is eviscerated in the front seat.

He's not even here anymore and he's still paying for fucking gas.

"Do you boys have a Queen cassette?"

No, Sam doesn't. He's still staring at the blurry contents of Dean's wallet. They're always paying for something. But Sam realizes he still doesn't want Crowley fucking touching anything.

He still doesn't want to give in to all this. He doesn't want Crowley at the wheel and he doesn't want to check out, slip under. He doesn't want to let this get away from him. He doesn't want to be alone, but he does, very badly, want to be. He didn't let Dean go to just get swallowed anyway.

Crowley must recognize Sam's smoldering in the back seat, because he turns around. Sam doesn't twitch. He's not sure what Crowley's gained from all this--the death of Abaddon notwithstanding, and the return of the Blade, or Dean's jaw, or Dean, or whatever this weapon was supposed to be, to the depths of the ocean--but Crowley should know that this doesn't mean he's won. He has not sat back and let his plans unfold, violent and flawless, and won.

"Van Nuys," Sam rasps.

Sam feels under the seat for one of their first aid kits. The effort leaves him lightheaded, and he stumbles into a puddle of Gadreel somewhere below consciousness. He loves the sea, and it's calling him home.

And Sam has every reason and no reason to believe that the key is Gadreel's bright mirror, under the waves. But if it's home, then it's Heaven--after all, they all came from the sea. And if he and Dean are looking for a fight to end all fights, that's where it's going to be. If that's what Dean's headed for, Sam just needs to find a way to meet him there--and he knows exactly who he needs to ask.

Sam has no proof that Gadreel is in Van Nuys. He has no proof that Cas is.

He has no proof that Dean--

He has no real proof of Dean, period.

But if there's something Cain gave Abel, it was the door to Heaven. If there's anything Gadreel can know how to love on earth, it's the door to Heaven. And if Dean can hear its song, then the Dean Sam knows will find it. And it will be his humanity that grants him passage.

There are no whales in Heaven; no monsters, and no demons.

He and Dean will see this through. Of that, Sam's absolutely certain. Even if they tear each other's throats out in the process, or can't stand to speak another single word to one another. Backs turned against the other, or hearts closed, they will see this through. If they have to tear across universes alone, driving hard and fast and wildly away from one another, they will see this through.

And when they come out on the other side, Sam thinks, they'll finally see each other face to face. Whatever that face is, and whatever words it holds, they'll see each other.

Of this, Sam has no proof but furious belief. He has no room for emptiness and no time for calm apathy.

He's ready to fight.

When Crowley leaves to pay their gas tab, Sam reclaims the Impala. Sam can't deal with Crowley right now; not without Dean, or the Blade, or some other better plan. But he can drive to Van Nuys. He can show Crowley what it feels like to be betrayed and left behind.

\--

Sam would never have made it to Van Nuys; at least, not breathing. This is one of the first things Cas says to him, after he heals Sam's wounds and misreads his simmering frustration. 

"I'm sorry," Gadreel adds, "If you feel like this has cheapened your efforts."

Because Sam was right; Cas and Gadreel are indeed riding together now, though Sam hasn't yet been able to parse the circumstances of the arrangement. He skates a hand over his torso. There's a smooth scar on his side (and Sam's not sure if it's something Cas let him keep, or something Cas could not heal--Dean had the Mark of Cain, after all). His ribs are no longer tender.

Sam doesn't feel cheapened, just annoyed. Because he nods at Cas, and Cas nods back, distracted--his body language is questing, as though he has many things to say but only half as many people as he expected to say them to. 

"Sam, you remember Gadreel," Cas says, which is less an introduction than a placeholder. It's some line Cas learned from TV, a meaningless nicety he doesn't quite believe in. He's still looking around for Dean.

"What are you doing in Oregon, Cas?" Sam answers.

"Your ribs," says Cas. "We followed you. It seemed... like a cry for help."

Sam would like to ask him what the hundreds of texts before had been, what the fuck he thought the disaster in his inbox had been. A part of him still can't believe that this is what it's all come down to, this is what he's left to do, and those were so many times he failed, and Dean failed, and Cas failed to turn this around so damn long ago. Would it have killed you to have picked up the phone? Sam thinks. Or listened? Or fucking said anything?

(But how many times has Sam's throat closed around a feeling or admission he couldn't speak? There are words that can kill on exit.) 

If Sam lets himself be angry at Cas, then he's angry at himself, and--still, and unavoidably--fucking angry at Dean, too. Right now, he is only interested in furious belief.

"Where's Dean?" Cas asks finally, brow furrowed. "I called. You both went to voice mail."

Sam ignores him. "I need to get into Heaven. If you're working together, I assume that was the point."

Gadreel cocks his head, and Sam feels an incredible sense of deja vu. Simultaneously, he feels the motion in his own body, and remembers it in Cas. It's an angelic comportment Cas had long since abandoned.

"So you'd finish what you started?" Gadreel asks. He thinks Sam means to die. He remembers who Sam was and thinks that's who he is, which is a common mistake.

Castiel's attention flicks to Gadreel, and it's clear that's not what he's pulled from this meeting at all. Like the idea is so inconceivable he's not sure why Gadreel even suggested that might be the case. Castiel's faith makes Sam feel guilty--about keeping him at distance, about refusing to explain--but the pure faith Cas has in him, that's wrong too.

Sam is not that good, and not that strong; and overestimation can be just as dangerous as mistrust. Even now, in the seat of searing, incredible focus, he's only a turn away from total collapse. He's not as whole as he thinks he is--if he's learning anything this month, it's that. But he is not for someone or something else to mould. And this will not be his nightmare.

"Sam," Cas says softly. He's still confused, though that's treading toward something more desperately sad than curious. And Sam feels worse, because he knows that he's doing to Cas right now what he and Dean have been doing to each other for years. He's come this far, and he still can't kick the habit of silence and omission. And Sam knows, so clearly and so absolutely, that he's going to use Cas, and keep him in the dark, and then, eventually, abandon him. Go it alone, and keep him from getting involved. For Cas's own safety. For Sam's. 

"Sam, what makes you think--"

"I'm going to kill God," Sam says. He's going to use Cas--and Gadreel; did that make this vengeance?--and then he's going to leave him. He can't shake the pattern.

But killing God, or Metatron, or whatever name the Devil's taken this time--that's not his endgame, is it, Sam thinks. Metatron is just an intermediary. He's not what Sam's really up against, and it's not what Sam is fighting, but what he's fighting for.

 _This_ is now it ends: He and Dean are going to win.

They're going to shout and and rage and fight and sometimes, even, listen; they'll joke and laugh and lie and then apologize; and they will listen, and they will listen. They'll scream things they don't mean and whisper things they do, except when they mix them up and get it the other way around. They'll fill confused, hurt spaces. They will open up hidden passages. And probably, they'll fill themselves with more than they can handle. They will spill over. They will empty accidentally. And then they'll fill again, and explode, and start the whole game over again. 60/40 it's going to feel like shit the whole way down, maybe always; but in the end, they win. 

They will love as long and as loudly as possible.

"Cas," he says, "Come with us."


	10. Chapter 10

Dean swims. 

The ocean is cool and fluid and blue. 

Of course, the ocean is, by definition, largely cool and fluid and blue. It's not that remarkable. But maybe that’s the point, in the end. 

Dean doesn't swim toward the horizon; he has no business there. And he doesn’t swim back to Sealand. Something in him tells him that he needs to swim as far from there as possible. As far from the nets and the screaming and Sam and all of that. He needs to get out. And he swims down. He swims down. Then farther. Farther. He swims so far into the deep the light fades away, and even he can start to feel the pressure of the water all around him. It’s cold still, certainly, but almost less fluid, and no longer blue at all. 

Dean swims down, and down, and down. Even the scratch of small bony crustaceans carries for miles here. 

When Dean lets out a sound, it travels. It travels farther than Dean’s ever imagined himself. He extends farther than he has ever imagined. And for the first time, he can hear himself. He can hear himself singing. Dean dives downward until the sound overpowers everything else. Dean drives hard.

He dives into the soundscape and lets himself filter into music.

He hears a bright, beckoning thing.

 

But that's not his song, he thinks, and hesitates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**END.**

**Author's Note:**

> \- Title and inspiration are borrowed from T.S. Eliot's "The Dry Salvages", from Four Quartets. Unlike Eliot's, however, my title doesn't rhyme with 'assuages.'
> 
> \- Sharks don't have pelvises, you have to pay for your gas before you pump it, and Dean probably doesn't weigh 12 tons. But this last is an (understandable) overestimate on Sam's part.
> 
> \- There's a group of Mexican killer whales that actually damaged the population of great white sharks around the Channel Islands by flipping, drowning, and eating them. (Sam wasn't a great white, but a shortfin mako, fwiw.) However, eau d' dead shark is a strong enough negative stimulant that sharks have been shown to rocket out of tonic immobility when exposed to the scent.
> 
> \- Many thanks to my flist for their dauntless cheerleading and patience with my whinging, as well as their writing advice and inspiration. <3 And a tremendous thanks to my team of beta-readers, who were so unbelievably thorough and thoughtful in spite of the fact that I dumped 40k on them in a single weekend: CARANFINDEL, for her beauteous attention to canon details and discrepancies, and fortitude in setting straight questionable logics (sartorial, magical, and everything in between); EPHERMERALK and HARRIGAN for their attention to concision, clarity, and grammatical correctness; and especially their acute senses of Sam and Dean as characters, and how to best express their convoluted actions and headspaces; and STEEPLECHASERS for her help with the pacing and dynamics of troubled scenes, and the fic as a coherent whole. This fic would not be a fraction of what it is without all of their insights and assistance.
> 
> \- And a very special thanks to BLUETEAINFUSION, whose wonderful art never ceases to stun and inspire. Thanks so much for being my partner in this expedition, bb, especially at such a busy time in your life! You're a total rockstar and a true visionary. <3


End file.
